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MARTIN B. ANDERSON 



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MARTIN B. ANDERSON, LL. D. 

BY 

A. C. Kendrick, D. D., LL. D. 
i2mo, 295 pp. 



PAPERS AND ADDRESSES 

BY 

Martin B. Anderson, LL. D. 

Edited by Professor William C. Morey 

2 vols. i2mo. 



American Baptist Publication Society 



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tyCt. /3. yK^i 




MARTIN B. ANDERSON, LLD. 



A BIOGRAPHY 



Y BY 

ASAHEL C. KENDRICK, D. D., LL. D. 

ASSISTED BY 

FLORENCE KENDRICK COOPER 



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i) £cotj tov 'IrjcroC . . <j>avepo)9rj. — Paul 



AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 



PHILADELPHI 
1895 



J 



a.3s~-f~o~ti * 



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Copynght 1895 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



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NOTE 



"There may be two reasons for writing a man's biog- 
raphy. His public service may have been of so valuable 
a kind as to create a public demand for the details of his 
history. Or, his private character may have been of so rare 
an order as to add the materials of inspiration to the public 
ideals." So writes Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in the opening 
sentences of her father' s memoir. 

The words seem very fitting ones with which to preface 
the life of President Anderson. Both reasons given apply 
to him. His public service was of a supreme order. For the 
cause of education, for his country in her hour of peril, for 
the generation of men among whom he lived, for the young 
men whose very souls he dominated, he rendered a service 
which words can hint, but whose story they can never 
tell. And his private character was just as conspicuous. 
Indomitable in will, inflexible in integrity, self-forgetful in 
purpose, broad in sympathies, kingly in intellect, docile in 
spirit, unsullied in life, in himself as well as in his service 
he is more than worthy of such remembrance as a work like 
this can give. 

There is another reason. As is repeatedly said in these 
pages, Dr. Anderson's students were his sons. For them 
he had many a parental pang, and they in their turn carry 
him in their hearts. They admired, they revered, they 
loved him. They looked upon him as 

A chief of men 
Who ever was himself his noblest sermon. 



6 NOTE 

They would have all possible means employed to keep 
his memory alive. From the nature of the case others come 
in and fill the place where one has wrought. Tradition 
grows shadowy, and even remembrance becomes faint some- 
times, unless now and then revived. And so these sons of the 
dead president would have some brief memorial by which 
they themselves may vivify the past and make more dis- 
tinct the form of him who towered so regally above them. 
For the one of them who in some measure has been the 
means of securing this memoir, and who writes these words, 
the work has been a labor of love. And he dedicates it so 
far as he may to his brother alumni, knowing there is no 
one of them all who will not be glad thereof. 

The publishers are especially gratified that they have been 
able to secure the honored Dr. Kendrick to write this 
memoir of President Anderson. The older "boys " will be 
glad to have them thus together — " Prex " and " Kai 
Gar," equally loved of them, fraternally associated in the 
work of their lives, fittingly linked together in its permanent 
record. The publishers are gratified too, that they have 
been able to secure the co-operation of the gentlemen whose 
names appear in connection with the " Personal Portraiture," 
alumni all of them but one, and who from the experience 
of their student life and after years have been able to add 
to the completeness of the work. And so they send forth 
this Life of Dr. Anderson with the hope, that while 

The winged years that winnow praise and blame, 
Blow many names out, 

it may help to keep his fresh and undimmed. 

P. L. J. 

Philadelphia. 



CONTENTS 



■*■ * PAGE 

BIRTH AND ANCESTRY, 9 

II. 

THE LIFE IN BATH, , 21 

III. 

WATERVILLE AS A STUDENT, 3 1 

IV. 

NEWTON AND WATERVILLE AS A TEACHER, . 53 

V. 

ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON, .... J J 

VI. 
AS EDITOR OF "THE NEW YORK RECORDER," 

185O-I853, 89 

VII. 

AT ROCHESTER 1853-I87O, 121 

VIII. 

AT ROCHESTER TO 1 882, l6l 

IX. 

THE CLOSING YEARS, 1 83 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

v 

U ^' PAGE 

A PERSONAL PORTRAITURE, .... 205-295 

The Man, 207 

Lemuel Moss, D. D., LL. D. 

As a Scholar, 218 

Prof W. C. Morey, A. M. 

His Personal Relations with Young Men, . 235 
Pres. Merrill E. Gates, LL. D. 

As a Factor of Inspiration, 249 

Robert S. MacArthur, D. D. 

As a Denominational Force, 265 

Cephas B. Crane, D. D. 

As a Public Man, 276 

Hon. Albion W. Tourge"e. 

A Characterization, 293 

George Dana Boardman, D. D , LL D. 



BIRTH AND ANCESTRY 



What curious tales has life in store, 

With all its must-be' s and its may -be' s ; 

The sage of eighty years and more, 

Once crept a nursling on the floor — 

Kings, conquerors, judges — all were babies. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, 



BIRTH AND ANCESTRY 

MARTIN BREWER ANDERSON was born 
in Brunswick, Maine, February 12, 181 5. 
To an inquiring visitor in that vicinity recently, two 
" oldest inhabitants " expressed the opinion that his 
birthplace was the neighboring town of Freeport, 
and a third, older than the two oldest, said that 
"his father's farm was so near to the 'Freeport 
line ' that it was almost on it, and might be over it, 
he was not certain." The names " Anderson " and 
"Brewer" were said to be more commonly met 
with in Freeport than in Brunswick, and to the in- 
quirer it became doubtful whether Dr. Anderson 
was not to be the object of a not only disputed, 
but perhaps undetermined birthplace — a preroga- 
tive of distinction, not of obscurity. Upon further 
investigation, a manuscript was found in his own 
handwriting which settled the question. 

Brunswick, a town with a history of its own, and 
the seat of Bowdoin College, needs no introduction. 
In this year of our Lord, 1894, village and college 
are alive with the festivities attending the one hun- 
dredth anniversary of the founding of the latter. 
A broad main street, with shadowy cross streets, 

11 



12 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the busy falls of the Androscoggin, an old hotel, 
very proud of its age, several modern public build- 
ings, conscious of being at an unwonted disadvan- 
tage in this centennial year, the old post-road to 
Freeport and to Bath, the pretty college campus 
bordered with stately buildings, a shrieking loco- 
motive, which rushes past the college so near 
that it mingles its vague hints of " whence and 
whither" with those of metaphysics; these are a 
few of the features that strike a stranger entering 
the village to-day. In 1 8 1 5 some of these were 
lacking ; but the past and present are linked together 
by the trees of the "forest primeval," which stand 
with old-time strength, but droop with fresh grace 
and greenness, making a hundred years ago seem a 
part of the present. 

If Bowdoin had graduated no other sons than 
Longfellow and Hawthorne their Alma Mater would 
have a name. But there are among her alumni 
many distinguished men, and the little village is 
half revealed and half concealed by the lustre of its 
scholastic reputation. Although Bowdoin did not 
graduate Martin B. Anderson, the presence of a col- 
lege in his native village brought inspiration to the 
boy. The respect for learning that is inwrought 
by familiarity with scholars, and the names of their 
pursuits, counts for much in its influence on the 
culture and career of the young. Doubtless this 
institution of learning had a share in shaping the 
life of this impressionable and ambitious youth. 



BIRTH AND ANCESTRY 13 

The ancestry of the younger Martin was honor- 
able and somewhat distinguished in the "inhumani- 
ities " of war, however, rather than in those that 
mark the pursuits of the scholar. The warlike 
spirit lived even in the last generation, and to 
a degree scarcely less marked. The descendant 
who said, in one of his " chapel talks," " Make it 
a rule to stay where you are. If you leave, do not 
let any one dislodge you. Fight, fight, fight ! " 
and " I shall never feel right till I have thrashed 
a plumber," had not allowed the blood of the 
Indian fighter and of the Revolutionary soldier to 
turn to water in his veins. 

The following sketch was written by Dr. Ander- 
son for the " History of Brunswick." 

It is true that I am a native of Brunswick, as 
was my father before me. My father, Martin 
Anderson, removed to Freeport when I was about 
three years old. But my grandfather, Jacob Ander- 
son, lived in Brunswick till his death, and my grand- 
mother, nee Jameson, also continued in Brunswick 
until her death. 

When young I was constantly in Brunswick, and 
hence feel a natural interest in all that pertains to 
the town. My ancestors on my father's side were 
North-of-Ireland Scotchmen. They migrated from 
the town of Dangamnon, in Tyrone County, Ireland. 
The date of their arrival I do not know. It must 
have been somewhere about 1710. They settled 
for a while near Old Orchard, but soon scattered. 
My great-grandfather migrated to what is now 

B 



14 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

known as Flying Point. Here he built a block- 
house and became a farmer and a somewhat noted 
Indian fighter during the French war. On this 
farm my grandfather, also named Jacob Anderson, 
was born and reared. From this place he left for 
Washington's army at Cambridge the morning after 
the news of the battle of Lexington reached Maine. 
Jacob Anderson removed to Brunswick and cleared 
a farm lying between the Woodside and Ross farms 
on the main road from Brunswick to Freeport. 
The farm has been sold out of the family, and I do 
not know who owns it. On this farm my father 
was born and reared. He also bore arms in the 
war of 1812. His name was Martin Anderson. 
He died at my house in this city (Rochester, N. Y.), 
December 7, 1875, at the age of eighty-six. . . 

An old story occurs to me of the Revolutionary 
times in Brunswick. The Woodside family de- 
scended from a Church of England clergyman. 
Anthony Woodside, his son, was naturally a Tory. 
He was a boisterous-talking man, and annoyed the 
patriots very much. At a town meeting, held at 
the old town meeting-house, on the plain east of 
the village about a mile, he was a serious obstruc- 
tion to the measures which they wished to carry. 
Finally the patriots dug a hole in the sand and 
buried him to the chin. My grandfather interceded 
with Brigadier Thompson for permission to dig his 
neighbor from the sand. The old patriot general 
stammered. His reply was, " L-l-let him st-st-stay 
there till the re-re-resurrection." I am sorry that I 
cannot give you more facts. My life has been a 
laborious one, and I have had no time for genea- 
logical inquiries. My ancesters were all plain 



BIRTH AND ANCESTRY 1 5 

farmers and mechanics ; but they were honest peo- 
ple and patriotic to the core. I believe all my 
grandfather's brothers, as well as himself, served in 
the Revolutionary army. They were old-school 
Federalists and loved the Union. 

Dr. Anderson's mother was of English descent. 
Her maiden name was Jane Brewer, and she was 
born in Freeport. Thus the son had mingled in his 
veins the blood of Scot and Celt and Briton ; in form, 
face, temperament, and character, he showed plainly 
the influence of these neighboring but differing races. 

O lady and lover, how faint and far 
Your images hover — and here we are — 
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone — 
Edward's and Dorothy's, all your own. 

"Solid and stirring" well describe the traits of 
character and of person inherited by the boy 
Martin from his parents. His mother was a woman 
of unusual force. The Briton's strong will and 
love of independence were her dowry to her son. 
She had a deeply religious nature, and was an ardent 
advocate of temperance. 

Dr. Joseph Ricker, of Augusta, Maine, in a re- 
cent book describes vividly the customs as to the 
general use of liquor that prevailed, especially in 
country districts, in the early part of this century. 
He says : " At the dawn of the nineteenth century 
and for many years thereafter, we were fast becom- 
ing a nation of drunkards. . . Its (the rum-bottle's) 



1 6 MARTIN B. ANDKRSON 

aid was invoked alike to assuage grief and to aug- 
ment joy. At the ' raising' of buildings, the har- 
vesting of hay, the husking of corn, with the music 
of wedding-bells, or the sad notes of the funeral dirge, 
at the dedication of churches, the ordination of min- 
isters, the voting precincts of citizens, the muster- 
ing of soldiers for drill and duty — its presence was 
anticipated as a matter of course, and its absence 
regretted if inevitable, and resented, if intentional." 
In addition to this : " Figuratively speaking, cider 
flowed in rivers throughout the land. . . It may be 
said that it was always on the table at meal-time ; 
always dispensed to callers, come when or whence 
they might ; always conveniently near to quench 
the thirst of toilers in field or shop, and always 
within call during the cozy evening hours." 

This condition, existing in the same region as 
that in which the family of Mr. Anderson lived, 
throws into bold relief the position assumed by 
Mrs. Anderson on this subject. There were some 
already thundering against such a state of things. 
But the work of the Hon. Neal Dow was not only 
not done, but was unbegun ; a work which made, 
later, of Maine, a typical temperance community. 
Mrs. Anderson took extreme temperance ground, 
a position remarkable at that time in that com- 
munity. 

She was an undemonstrative woman, as must be 
inferred from her son's statement that he never re- 
membered receiving a kiss from her. She loved her 



BIRTH AND ANCESTRY I J 

boy, however, as well as more demonstrative mothers 
do, and he regarded her with great reverence as well 
as warm affection. In one of his latest addresses, 
he referred with breaking voice to her early train- 
ing, and described how she led him, a little lad, by 
the hand to the Baptist church. She was a woman 
of considerable education. In a letter to his sister 
from college, he writes : " Observe and imitate 
mother ; you can have no better guide in correct 
speaking than she." She died in Waterville, Maine, 
in 1848. 

Mr. Anderson was a man of great personal merit 
and of unusual intelligence. He was a ship-carpen- 
ter by trade, but his alert mind was not confined in a 
ship-yard. The correspondence carried on between 
father and son during their separations was remark- 
able. Page after page is often filled with keen 
observations on politics, religion, education, and 
business. An accident in the ship-yard disabled the 
father from carrying on his trade while Martin was 
still a boy of sixteen. From that time the elder 
does what he is able to do, but the younger is the 
responsible bread-winner and family adviser. From 
his father, Dr. Anderson inherited quick intuitions, 
a power of ready and forcible speech, and an 
emotional nature, manifesting itself in quick tears, 
a quick temper, and a certain rather broad, but tell- 
ing, kind of humor. The tenderest affection al- 
ways existed between father and son. 

Few facts are attainable relating to the early life 



l8 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

in Brunswick and Freeport. The home was hum- 
ble, and offered little opportunity to young ambition. 
It was a home of poverty — 

But of comforts, and riches, and blessings, 
Which silver and gold cannot buy — 

The things that make royal the forehead, 
And set a delight in the eye, — 

Of these, the deep spiritual graces, 
That give unto life its divine, 

that first home, like the last, had ample store ; it 
was a home where religion ruled and education was 
revered. 

It is always difficult to realize that any sort of 
giant begins like smaller folk. It is almost amus- 
ing to think of the huge form, which obeys the sum- 
mons of memory at the mention of Dr. Anderson's 
name, as ever minute enough to be confined within 
the limits of an ordinary baby's cradle. It must be 
supposed that the infant Martin kicked off the 
blankets and insisted "on his legs being free " with 
rather extraordinary demonstrations of determina- 
tion. It causes a smile to imagine him in "dresses " 
— a humiliation to which earth's mightiest are for a 
time subjected. There is no account of the begin- 
nings of his mental processes. He was precocious, 
for he could read at the age of three years, a record 
not beaten by the intellectual feats of the infant 
Macaulay. If his later passion for asking ques- 
tions was developed as early as his ability to 



BIRTH AND ANCESTRY 19 

read was acquired, he must have led his parents 
a proud but perplexed existence, impeded by the 
worn-out remains of encyclopaedias and diction- 
aries. 

The germ of the fifty-year old philosopher is in 
the five-year old, and is more actively troublesome. 
The questions of the average child are adapted to 
furrow the brow and blanch the hair of the con- 
scientious parent. "Papa!" said one dear little 
New-England boy, as a wild nor'easter bowed the 
trees and rocked the house, " Papa ! how can such 
thin wind _p2ts/i so ? " In absence of records it must 
be assumed that the young Martin was an eager, 
active child in mind and body, that his strong na- 
ture must have caused apprehension as well as 
pride, in his youth, to his parents, and that they 
never gave more profoundly heart-felt and grateful 
acknowledgments to God than when their son took 
upon himself the vows of the Christian church. 
Not until he was on the threshold of manhood 
did this event occur. But, in the meantime, no 
sowings of wild oats sullied his reputation. Old 
residents of Brunswick and of Bath speak with 
pride of his "correct youth" and of his interest in 
everything worthy and manly. 

He went to school in the winter and in the sum- 
mer he worked in the ship-yard. The habits of 
accuracy as well as of industry, that marked his 
maturity, were largely the result of the careful 
work required of him in the ship-yard. The sea is 



20 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

not to be trifled with, and the young shipwright 
learned to drive his nails straight. That the nails 
went deep no one who has seen his powerful arms 
in motion can doubt. He breasted wind and tide, 
and he learned, unconsciously, lessons of struggle 
with adverse elements, and of their conquest, which 
strengthened his moral and mental as well as his 
physical being. In one of his late public addresses, 
in speaking of the fundamental nature of discipline 
in the formation of character, he says : "When I was 
a boy I never wished to chop wood ; I never wished 
to take care of a cow ; but I was obliged to do it. 
My mother said ( Go,' and I went ; I am thankful 
now for the discipline." This reference to the 
homely duties of a boy's life in a country village, 
gives a glimpse into the nature of the influences at 
work upon him. 

Mrs. Plunkett brilliantly opens her " Life of Dr. 
Holland " by quoting the famous recipe for great- 
ness : " Give a boy Parts and Poverty." In remote 
Brunswick these conditions were fulfilled. The 
recipe held good. It might be added that the 
"parts" must have in them a controlling element 
of sound moral fibre, and that the "poverty " must 
be free from its possible degradations. Certainly 
it is a glorious endowment to have in the veins the 
blood of strong, pure spirits, and to be born into a 
morally and physically invigorating atmosphere. 

Such was the inheritance in blood, and such the 
native air of Martin B. Anderson. 



II 

THE LIFE IN BATH 



I would fain grow old learning many things. 

— Solon. 



II 



THE LIFE IN BATH 



THE residents of Brunswick, and of Bath, who 
are familiar with the history of the Anderson 
family speak with emphasis of Martin's early matur- 
ity, of his determination to obtain a liberal educa- 
tion, of his lack of money for that object, except as 
he provided it for himself, and they say, significantly, 
" every one knew that he would amount to some- 
thing." He is still described as " Martin Anderson 
who was so intent on getting an education." 

A certain bishop is reported to have said, " Give 
me the training of a boy till he is ten, and you may 
then do what you will with him." The twig is cer- 
tainly bent before that age, and in this case the 
coming man was easily divined from the ambitious 
boy. It took native pluck, and a liberal supply, 
for him to determine upon and to carry through a 
scheme of education. The modern youth who, at 
his father's expense, goes to college as a matter 
of course, who graduates and post-graduates at 
home, and then re-graduates and post-post-graduates 
abroad, belongs to a different species from the 
young man of a New England village, three-quar- 
ters of a century ago. 

23 



24 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

When Martin was sixteen years old, his father 
removed his family from Freeport to the neighbor- 
ing town of Bath. Bath is an old town, having 
celebrated its centennial in eighteen hundred and 
eighty. It was, when Mr. Anderson removed 
thither, as it is now, a place of importance as a 
ship-building center. With the change of residence 
came a change of occupation. Mr. Anderson 
turned to school-teaching, his physical strength 
being unequal to the pursuit of his former occupa- 
tion. He had always been respected for his intelli- 
gence, but his new employment brought him into 
closer relation with so much of intellectual life as 
the town afforded. 

For the boy of to-day, even the boy of the farm 
and the village, it is difficult to conceive the meagre- 
ness of the intellectual resources of the best 
equipped home and school at that time, and in that 
place and similar places. 

In another town, in a neighboring New England 
State, in a pastor's home, the hungry minds of 
eight eager children were fed on two or three of 
Shakespeare's plays, all incomplete, the " Children 
of the Abbey," and "The Pastor's Fireside," as 
the supply of general literature. There was in 
addition one marvelous book, "Lewis and Clark's 
Travels to the Head- Waters of the Mississippi." 
This book recounted the explorations of two daring 
adventurers as far northward as the present site of 
St. Paul, Minnesota. The heart of Africa, or the 



THE LIFE IN BATH 25 

rivers of Middle China do not seem so remote, so 
strange, so unknowable to-day to the youngest 
reader, as seemed that far north point on that 
American river to a well-grown boy on the eastern 
edge of this continent, in the first quarter of the 
century. Add to the list of books named a few 
religious " works," besides the " Pilgrim's Progress " 
and the " Saints' Rest," and there is a nearly com- 
plete list of a " large library" in those times for a 
private house to possess. The majority of the vil- 
lage householders were guiltless of the extravagance 
of owning a book. The " Library " had become a 
feature among the public institutions of some of 
the more ambitious towns. But the public library 
is, even to-day, a plant of slow growth outside of 
the large cities, and at that time had scarcely taken 
root. 

Bath, however, had its literary aspirations. 
There was a debating club, of which young Ander- 
son showed himself a valuable member. He is said 
not to have been a "Beau Brummel" in appearance 
at that time, but neither was he a " Beau Brum- 
mel" in brains. He was keen and alert in thought 
and speech, and gave promise of his later platform 
success. To his practice in this club he attributed 
the facility in "thinking on his feet," for which he 
was remarkable throughout his life, and for his ease 
and dignity of manner on the public platform. He 
began at this time the process of systematic self- 
education which he never relaxed. In later life the 

c 



26 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

duty that one owes to one's self in regard to educa- 
tion, and of assisting others in their efforts toward 
this end, was one of his favorite topics in public ex- 
hortation, or in private admonition. In an earnest 
address before the convention of Baptist Social 
Unions, he laments that so little is said publicly, 
and especially from the pulpit, on the duty of cre- 
ating an educated laity, and makes a powerful plea 
for a " higher education" that shall be universal. 

The life at Bath was marked by a spiritual, as 
well as an intellectual awakening. During a re- 
vival of religion he became interested, and at the 
age of eighteen he experienced that inward trans- 
formation which is truly a "conversion." He often 
said, " men are savages, tamed if tamed at all, by 
their wives and the grace of God." Just when 
the savage in him was at its strongest the taming 
process was powerfully begun. From this time 
every faculty of his moral and spiritual nature 
developed rapidly. 

The principles of living whose declaration was 
among the latest utterances of his failing voice 
were implanted in his heart during these momentous 
days. The love of truth, the claims of duty, and 
especially, the resolve to do what he could to benefit 
his fellow-men — these exalted motives took posses- 
sion of his soul. It was not only the initial act of a 
personal spiritual consecration that he performed 
when he united with the church at Bath. That act 
marked in him a widened outlook, a deepened chan- 



THK LIFE IN BATH 2 J 

nel, a higher aim for every faculty and activity of 
his being. Through fightings within, and some 
fightings that were not altogether within, through 
failures and through triumphs, from that time he 
was the unwavering preacher and teacher of the 
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, maintaining with 
its friends and foes alike its historic power and its 
future triumph. 

It was about this time, when he was nineteen 
years of age, that he wrote the following letter to a 
friend and neighbor in Bath, a sea-captain : 

Bath, February 26, 1834. 

Dear Sir : I have sat down this morning to 
write a few lines to one toward whom I ha\~e ever 
felt sentiments of love and respect, on the all-im- 
portant subject of religion. Pardon me, sir, for 
this intrusion, but the momentous importance of 
the subject I trust will be my excuse. I think, if I 
know my own heart, that I feel sensibly the import- 
ance of attending to the concerns of our souls be- 
fore it shall be eternally too late, and I feel a trem- 
bling hope that God has pardoned my sins. Oh, sir, 
you will never have the sins to answer for that I 
have. My sins against God have been aggravated 
by my privileges. I acknowledge that we lands- 
men have a great many more religious advantages 
than those who follow the sea. But this will not 
excuse you from attending to the subject of your 
soul. 

God speaks to you by a louder voice than that of 
dying man when the storms rage and the billows 



28 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

are wrought into fury ; when your frail vessel is 
tossed on high, when the water rushes through the 
seams and, to the eye of reason, you are fast verg- 
ing on the eternal world. It speaks to you in a 
voice louder than thunder, "Prepare to meet thy 
God." When in foreign climes the pestilence walk- 
eth in darkness and destruction wasteth at noon- 
day, it speaks to you, " Mortal man, you are bound 
to eternity." Oh, eternity — what an awful import in 
that word. God speaks to you by his blessings, 
when you are preserved from all danger and re- 
turned to your friends and family. I think, my 
dear sir, that if you speak the truth, often you have 
seen the time when you would have given all you 
possessed for a well-grounded hope that it would be 
well with you when you come to die. . . 

Pardon this freedom I have taken with you — 
nothing but a deep sense of our accountability to 
God could make me use this freedom with a su- 
perior. . . Yours, 

Martin B. Anderson. 

The question of his education was a pressing one 
at this time. He worked in the ship-yard with un- 
remitting energy, using a part of his earnings for 
the family support, and reserving a part for his col- 
lege expenses. Out of his own experience was 
born his later zeal to help ambitious boys hampered 
by poverty. In the address already mentioned, he 
refers sympathetically to the " twenty-five or thirty 
young men, annually under my instruction, who 
have no claim upon any fund, no backing of any 
sort, except that of their own back-bone." He did 



THE LIFE IN BATH 29 

not, however, believe very fully, at any time, in 
what may be called the " indulgences " of education. 
Had he had a son, doubtless he would have done 
as other fathers do, in this day of educational 
luxury ; — 

The heir of all earth's heritage 
Was Jim at forty years of age ; 
The lore of all the years was shut 
And focused in his occiput. 

He would probably have given to his son every " ad- 
vantage," but such a course would have been in op- 
position to his judgment to a certain extent. 

He believed that no number of colleges educate 
a boy like the training school of self-support, the 
necessity of self-reliance, and that a mind may con- 
tinue to take in without giving out, until the facul- 
ties become enervated, and lose their power to get a 
good grip on thought and work. With the dissipa- 
tion of the mental powers and with undefined activi 
ties he had no patience. Aim and achievement were 
the only "open sesame" to his highest respect. 

He prepared himself for college slowly, as he was 
able to, and entered Waterville College, now Colby 
University, at Waterville, Maine, in 1836. A cousin 
of Dr. Anderson, Mr. J. E. Jameson, now living at 
Bath, in answer to some questions concerning his 
cousin, Martin B. Anderson, said : " Remember him ? 
Why, I rowed him across the river when he went to 
college. He walked three miles down to the river, 
and then after he got across he walked the rest of 



30 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the way. I rather think he had to. But he was 
bound to go to college, and I remember as though 
it were yesterday the day he came tramping down 
to the river." Another cousin, Miss Jameson, said : 
" All the old people remember him and his father, 
Deacon Anderson. They loved the church, and 
Martin was so clever that we were all proud of him. 
He loved to come back to Maine, and we were 
proud and pleased to see him. And we thought he 
had a beautiful wife. She was such a lady. We 
liked her much." 

When Martin went to college he left behind in the 
family home his father and mother, both delicate in 
health, and his only sister, Maria. He never re- 
turned to Bath except for brief visits, and the fam- 
ily joined him in Waterville a few years later. He 
must have felt a keen pleasure in finding, when he 
returned on visits in later years, that in spite of ab- 
sence and independently of his mature reputation 
he still lived as a boy, in his early home, in vivid 
remembrance and in honorable tradition. 



Ill 

WATERVILLE— AS A STUDENT 



It matters little how long I stay 

In a world of sorrow, sin, and care ; 
Whether in youth I am called away, 

Or live till my bones and pate are bare. 
But whether I do the best I can 

To soften the weight of adversity's touch 
On the faded cheek of my fellow-man, 

It matters much. 

— Noah Barker. 



Ill 

WATERVILLE AS A STUDENT 

WATERVILLE COLLEGE is a Baptist insti- 
VV tution now rapidly nearing the "morn of 
its hundredth year." The name, just given, was 
changed in 1864 to "Colby University," in recog- 
nition of the gift of fifty thousand dollars to the 
college, from Mr. Gardner Colby, of Newton, Mas- 
sachusetts. Although its usefulness was for many 
years restricted by the lack of funds — until the 
gift just mentioned and others, less generous in 
amount, but no less so in spirit, relieved its strin- 
gency — this college has enrolled among its officers 
and alumni a large number of notable men. 

Dr. Jeremiah Chaplin was its first president, and 
held the office during the first thirteen years of its 
existence. The young college was poor in money, 
but rich in dignity. It is said of Dr. Chaplin that 
" he was a father to the students in, perhaps, the 
best sense of the word, but like all college presi- 
dents of that time, he stood much upon ceremony. 
Thus, if a student had occasion to speak to him, 
even though it were out of doors and in a pouring 
rain, and failed to remove his hat, the good doctor 
would instantly remove his own and follow the act 

33 



34 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

with a suggestion that the abashed young man 
would not soon forget." At the time when Dr. 
Anderson entered college, the president was Robert 
E. Pattison, D. D., a man of rare qualities as a man, 
as a teacher, and as an executive officer. 

A lifelong friendship was begun between the 
president that was and the president that was to be. 
Among the faculty of instruction were Professors 
George W. Keely, Phinehas Barnes, Justin R. 
Loomis, and James T. Champlin, all men of high 
personal character, and of distinction in their pro- 
fession. Of his teachers in college, Dr. Ander- 
son while a student held a very high opinion, 
which was strengthened by his own experience as a 
teacher. At the time of his conversion he had 
resolved upon the Christian ministry as the only 
profession that would satisfy his awakened sense 
of duty, and it was with this in view that he 
began his course of study in college. He had at 
one time, incited by his success as a "debater" in 
the debating club at Bath, thought strongly of 
entering the profession of the law. This purpose 
he had abandoned entirely. 

He took the regularly prescribed college course, 
although he had no great liking nor talent for some 
of its branches. Elective courses were not usual, 
but even had they been, he would not have availed 
himself of them. Upon this compliance on his 
part with the customary routine of study, he in 
later years heartily congratulated himself. Indeed, 



WATERVIIXE — AS A STUDENT 35 

he became aware, he says, very soon after entering 
college, " of the beneficial effect upon his own de- 
velopment of the especially close study which he 
gave to those branches in which he was at first 
least interested and least proficient." 

His experience at that time, and his later ex- 
perience and observation, strengthened his original 
confidence in the wisdom of insisting upon the 
established course of study, giving very limited 
encouragement, except in rare instances, to the 
demands for an elective course. He gives his 
views in full on this subject, in an address, delivered 
when he opened, as chairman, the convention of 
college presidents, held at Ithaca, N. Y., on the 
occasion of the Centennial Anniversary of the 
University of the State of New York. His position 
on this subject was thoroughly sincere, and was in 
accordance with the structure of his own mind. 
Unlike most men of equal intellectual strength, he 
had himself no special aptitude, but skill in educing 
from all sources and of assimilating useful knowl- 
edge was one of his most marked mental character- 
istics. He was never a specialist ; neither could 
he have been, nor would he have cared to be. 

In college he was a leader, not always at the 
head of his class, but a natural authority, in class 
and outside of the class-room. As an instance of 
his instinct for leadership, an incident is told of a 
fire in Waterville soon after his arrival there. 

A panic arose. There was no order, and the fire 



36 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

was rapidly gaining headway. Suddenly the tower- 
ing figure of Anderson appeared on the top of 
a barrel brandishing an axe, enforcing attention 
and commanding action. Owing to his promptness 
and efficiency the panic was subdued and the fire 
extinguished. One of his associate students, from 
whose interesting book on the Baptist history of 
Maine of that period quotations have already been 
made, gives " willing and grateful testimony to the 
stimulating and wholesome effect of his society," 
and also says : " He was no random talker ; but he 
seemed to talk out of a mind so full that he often 
had no adequate sense of the weight and worth and 
significance of what he was saying. . . Many a 
time in those old college days did some chance 
saying of Anderson suggest, as by a flash of light, 
new lines of thought and inquiry which he (the 
writer) might otherwise have missed, and so have 
suffered great loss. . . In the spell of his presence 
there was a power at once difficult to define and 
impossible to escape. His wit and wisdom, his 
chance epigrams, his wealth of allusions to the 
great men and great events of the past, his apt 
quotations from this author and that, his casual 
hints, so suggestive of abundant stores still in 
reserve, all conspired to give him extraordinary 
influence with every one whom his college life 
touched." 

Base ball and foot ball did not, in those days, 
ensnare the athletic sympathies and activities of 



WATERVILXE — AS A STUDENT 37 

college boys. But old-fashioned " ball " and quoits 
were popular. Swimming was in vogue, and Martin 
B. Anderson, Samuel Lunt Caldwell, afterward a 
preacher of note and president of Vassar College, 
and Benjamin F. Butler often appeared together, 
rati nantes, tumbling about in the sparkling waters 
of the Kennebec. Some idea of the more personal 
conditions of his college life may be gathered from 
his letters to his father, written while he was a 
student. They are the letters of a devoted son, in 
whom ambition had not dulled the love of his home 
and of his parents, but in whom this affection was 
predominant over his private interests and advance- 
ment. They are the letters of a truly Christian 
young man, whose inward life, though full of intense 
feeling and conflict, needs not to be concealed. They 
are so manly and earnest and serious in their views 
of life as to be pathetic in a man under twenty-five 
years of age. Gratitude, the noblest of virtues, 
shines out in luminous relief. As friend with 
friend, the father and son exchange long letters on 
topics of public and private interest. Letters were 
luxuries in those days, and luxuries had not yet 
become, as now, necessaries. They seem to be the 
one luxury which the economical habits and the 
limited means of the family permitted. The follow- 
ing is Martin's first letter home from college : 

Waterville, September 8, 1836. 
Dear Father : I arrived here yesterday morn- 

D 



38 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

ing in good health and spirits. I stopped at Mrs. 

's, but was not able to get examined before 

to-day. We have been all day doing penance be- 
fore a severe-faced professor, and to-night, just be- 
fore sunset, Barnes gave us our sentence and our 
certificates are to be made out to-morrow morning. 
I have not been able to make any arrangement 
with regard to my things, but to-morrow shall 
go at it. I think of boarding in commons. I 
want the feather bed sent up, as we cannot 
get any hay or straw to lie on. My chest came 
safe. Everything appears pleasant. The president 
I like very much ; he is very mild and gentlemanly. 
We have been examined most critically, but I have 
reason to be thankful they admitted me. I think 
that I can get along with what money I have. 

Give yourself no uneasiness about me, only re- 
member me in your prayers. Write me soon every- 
thing that is interesting, and write as soon as you 
receive this. I will write more next time. Give 
my love to all who inquire. 

Your son, 

Martin. 

To father and mother. 

Waterville, September 22, 1836. 
Dear Father : Excuse me for not writing be- 
fore, for positively I have not had time to write a 
letter. Our studies drive us so hard that they, 
with the necessary exercise, take all our time from 
sunrise till bedtime, whether it come late or early. 
. . I board in commons and have good board, and 
hope it will not cost more than seven and sixpence 
a week, but cannot tell at all. . . I work three 



WATERVILEE — AS A STUDENT 39 

hours a day almost all the time, but it does not 
amount to much, except as exercise, which is invalu- 
able. As it is, I enjoy excellent health, and on the 
whole I am more pleased with college life than I 
anticipated. 

In one point I am disappointed for the better — 
that is in the moral and religious character of the 
college, which with very few exceptions is decid- 
edly good. Seventeen in our class are professors 
of religion, the whole number being about thirty. 
A respectable majority of the other classes are also 
pious, and very many of them are excellent young 
men. The president in particular fills his station 
with honor to himself and satisfaction to the stu- 
dents. . . Tell Maria she must be a good girl and 
study hard, and see how much she can improve be- 
fore I get home. . . Tell me whom you have to 

preach now. Give my respects to Mr. M ; tell 

him I should be very happy to know the results of 
the debates in the club. Do send me a Bath paper 
or two. I want to hear the results of the election 
there and other news. Write me about my class in 
the Sunday-school. . . Tell mother I make an ex- 
cellent housewife — sweep my room every morning, 
and make my bed every night before we get into it. 

Your son, 

Martin. 

The "we" mentioned in the last sentence in- 
cludes young Anderson's "chum," Oakman Sprague 
Stearns, better known to the younger generation as 
"Dr. Stearns," for many years before his death — 
which has but recently occurred — the beloved and 



40 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

revered pastor and professor at Newton, Mass. 
His father, the Rev. Silas Stearns, was the pastor 
of the Baptist church at Bath at the time when 
Martin Anderson resided there, and he baptized the 
young Martin and his own son, Oakman, at or 
about the same time. The two young men entered 
college together, and " being members of the 
same church and . . . having in view the same end 
it was but natural that they should become room- 
mates as well as classmates." ''Thus was begun a 
lifelong friendship between men of rare nobility of 
character and purpose." Together they studied, 
recited, engaged in the work of the shop, and long 
and affectionate letters exchanged after they were 
separated proved that familiarity bred respect and 
affection. The expenses of the college term seem 
ludicrously small, but it took a struggle sometimes 
to meet them. They "ranged from eleven dollars 
to fifteen dollars per term, and included tuition, 
room rent, and sundry smaller items, such as use of 
text-books, incidental repairs, and the like. Table 
board in the village could be had for one dollar and 
fifty cents or one dollar and seventy-five cents per 
week. In the college ' commons ' it was often 
considerably less. But a few, by stress of poverty, 
felt obliged to board themselves in their rooms, in 
which event the cost was from forty-six to about 
seventy-five cents weekly." As will be seen by 
references in a later letter, young Anderson acted 
as "commissary" for a time, by which he lessened 



WATERVILLE — AS A STUDENT 41 

his own expenses, and proved a very valuable as- 
sistant to others by his skill in economizing. 

The following letter has no date except that of 
the month. The handwriting indicates that it was 
written at about the same time as the preceding 
letter : 

Waterville College, October 14th. 
Dear Father : Shortly after I wrote you last I 
received your kind letter, and really, did you know 
how much pleasure it gave me, I think you would 
write oftener. Accept my heart-felt thanks for the 
good advice you gave me and all that parental as- 
siduity with which you and mother have watched 
over my early years. In reviewing my early life, if 
there is anything more than another that I am 
thankful for it is that I have had such parents. 
Eternity alone can unfold the influence you have 
had on my young mind, fiery and impatient of re- 
straint as it was and prone to wander from the path 
of rectitude. God grant that I may prove as duti- 
ful a son as you have been parents. And I shall 
not fail in my duty to you. I continue to work in 
the shop, earning sometimes more and sometimes 
less. With regard to a school, I have concluded 
that it will not do for me to stay out of college one 
day if I can possibly help it. If I could get into 
your school for the time of the vacation and no 
longer I should be very glad ; but if I cannot — there 
it is ! . . I have to work hard to keep up with my 
class now, as it is, and if I should lose a week or 
two more in this year it will be a great detriment to 
me. I must try and make up the deficiency by 
economy. President says he loans money to a 



42 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

young man proving by the appearance of his coat 
that he does not mean to be absent in term time. 

The faculty drive very much and it is impossible 
to be in college without doing your utmost. Per- 
haps the faculty of instruction was never better 
than at present. . . I hope to pay my term bills by 
labor at least, and if I cannot get along without it, 
I must borrow money. I don't want to be the lub- 
ber all the time I am in college, as I am now, if I 
can help it. Stearns and I get along very well, and 
if I was but a decent scholar, I should enjoy myself 
better than I ever did before. Write me about 
your school. Work up the ambition. That's the 
way to make them study. Tell me all about Bath 
you can think of. Give my best respects to Mr. 
M . Tell that Prof. B has intro- 
duced Andrews & Stoddard's grammar into our 
class. He says it is much the best book extant. 

Remember me to all who inquire. I wish you 
to write to me often. It does me good to hear from 
home. Stearns sends his respects. Remember me 
to Maria and tell her not to forget me. . . 

Waterville College, March n, 1837. 

My Dear Father and Mother : From the 
tenor of your last letter I perceive that you thought 
it strange that I did not write. Forgive me if I 
have neglected you, which was the farthest from 
the intention of my heart. Constant occupation 
and paucity of incidents prevented me from writing, 
and after the fire I concluded of course that you 
would write me the particulars, and I waited and 
waited in vain until I received your letter. 

We kept on the day we started four miles beyond 



WATERVILLE — AS A STUDENT 43 

Bowdoinham. I took passage with another man 
and kept with him till night, when we arrived at 
Augusta. I suffered some from cold. . . I tried 
to get a passage, but gave it up, and went to the 

legislature with Mr. R , who treated me very 

politely. My impressions of the character of the 
consfreo-ated wisdom of our State I confess were not 
very favorable. They were discussing the disposi- 
tion of the surplus fund. I stopped till noon and 
then put my address on my trunk, took my cloak 
on my arm, started for Waterville on foot, and 
arrived there at eight o'clock in the evening. Went 
to sleep with Pattison. At ten o'clock, just as we 
were going to bed, the president's girl saw a light 
in the reading room in the south college. We 
moved over with some expedition. I burst the 
bell-ringer's door, and seized the bell-rope, etc. 
Went down, discovered the fire was in the ceiling 
under the president's fire-place. A soph, by the 
name of Lapham and myself entered by a stove-in 
window and dealt the cooling liquid around with 
fine effect. In two minutes the fire was subdued 
with trifling damage. I got my coat torn, however, 
and a sound wetting besides. I got my coat mended 
for twenty-five cents so well that it can hardly be 
seen. All we could say was that Providence saved 
the college. I was somewhat fatigued the next day 
from my walk of eighteen miles and my violent ex- 
ercise, but was soon well. 

Your son, 

Martin. 

Waterville College, July 8, 1837. 
Dear Parents : I received your letter in due 



44 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

time. I was sorry that you had been uneasy on 
my account, as I have enjoyed excellent health, ex- 
cept that I got some sand in one of my eyes and 
had an eye stone in it, which inflamed the other eye 
very much. . . The Fourth passed off without any 
difficulty. The boys fired away a cask of powder 
in the village, and displayed the fine flags on the 
college building, one of which was purchased for 
the occasion, with the motto of the college, Lilx 
mentis scientia, which is, being interpreted, " Knowl-' 
edge the light of the mind," printed on it. 

Down in town we had an oration. The speakers 
stuffed the mechanics and farmers with soft soap 
and Jacobinism, which you may judge did not suit 
me very well. . . 

Waterville College, November 2, 1837. 
Dear Father : There is one thing I wish to 
speak about your teaching — that is, to teach by 
analysis. I am convinced that you will find it to 
your advantage in teaching. The method is this, 
as you perceive from the meaning of the word : 
begin by asking the scholar what the main object 
of the lesson is, then let him name the principal 
subdivisions in such a manner that he will have a 
clear idea of the design of the whole lesson — what 
the author wishes to prove ; then let him descend 
to particulars, and in this way he will understand 
his lesson. The principle is like this : let a man 
work all his days in the ship-yard with tools, and if 
he does not analyze the whole work of a ship he 
never can make one. He looks only at a part. . . 

Yours, 

Martin. 



WATERVILLE — AS A STUDENT 45 

College, April 16, 1838. 

Dear Parents : I was sorry to learn that 
mother was unwell and also father. You must 
both be as careful as possible. It is a bad time of 
year for health. You say the rum champions carried 
the day in Bath. I am sorry, but cannot help it. 
Your information about the meeting-house was not 
at all unexpected. I had determined to write you 
on the subject some time since, but I forgot it 
when I wrote. 

The measure was concocted especially by 

of this town, who was a representative. It is a 
measure worthy of Judas Iscariot, designed to sow 
dissension in societies. These Jacobins cannot 
have sufficient power while the majority rule. Let 
our wise legislators carry out the principle they 
have thus recognized, and it would sap the founda- 
tions of civil society. . . 

There has been some revival in the west part of 
the town. Sixteen were baptized yesterday. . . We 
have looked and hoped for a revival in college, but 
as yet in vain. We need the prayers of the 
churches. I fear there is little heart -felt, effective 
prayer for this institution in the Baptist denomina- 
tion in this State. I believe if the churches felt the 
importance of fervent prayer for the object, they 
would not complain so much that the college does 
nothing for the churches. They cannot expect a 
blessing through the college if they do not pray and 
labor for it. In truth they ought not to have a 
blessing on any other condition. When the inter- 
ests of learning and religion, as connected with this 
college, bear with such weight on their minds that 
morning and midnight bear witness to their prayers, 



46 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

then the college will be a fountain of blessing that 
will make glad the city of God. . . 

Her (Maria's) moments are precious. I should 
like to have her with some person who would be 
competent to teach her, and at the same time form 
her manners. Suffer her to use no vulgarisms. 
I find those early vulgarisms I learned in the yard 
hanging about me to my sorrow. . . Above all things 
cultivate tenderness of conscience. Teach her the 
fearfulness of sinning. Lay up in heaven a stock 
of parents' prayers for her, and they will be an- 
swered sooner or later. Pray for me, that my con- 
science may be susceptible, that my religious 
feelings may be deepened, and that God may make 
me holy. Tell Maria to write me a letter to send 
up by Stearns at the end of the vacation. I want 
you to tell me the result of the town meeting and 
your prospects for a school, etc. 

Your son, 

Martin. 

Waterville College, April 30, 1838. 

Dear Father : I this morning received your 
letter for which I had been looking anxiously for 
some days. There are some reasons why I should 
not come home, and I will give them in full. First, 
the cost would be enough to pay for a new pair of 
boots I have bought, and I wish, if God will, to 
travel some in the vacation. I need it very much. I 
have not set my mind on this and shall not be disap- 
pointed either way. Next, my board costs nothing, 
and I want to buy some provision to save time in 
the subsequent term. And also there is an inter- 
esting time here, rather, in religion. You cannot 



WATERVIEEE — AS A STUDENT 47 

wish me at home more than I wish to be there, but 
I think the reasons are sufficiently strong to justify 
my course. 

You speak of affairs on which you wish to con- 
sult me, but you can write to me and I shall have 
time to write. You say your prospects are not 
good, but you must not be discouraged. God will 
provide for you most certainly. . . I have just made 
an estimate of board ; it amounts to one dollar and 
eleven cents a week — lower than I expected. Almost 
every one thinks there must be some mistake, but I 
have not been able to discover any as yet. If I do, 
a new dividend will be made. They gave me about 
eleven dollars besides my board. I may want some 
money this term, but I shall know better after I settle 
up. . . I believe the most perfect satisfaction exists 
on the part of every one as to my conduct as commis- 
sary. I have made up my mind to continue next 
term, although it retards my progress a little in 
study. If President Pattison comes to Bath, you 
can ask him for particulars. . . I will let you know 
so that if he does come you may be at home. Re- 
member I am your boy, and you have committed a 
trust to him, and you should know all about the 
circumstances connected with it. We have now fin- 
ished examinations. Mr. Stearns has come and 
chum goes home with him in the morning. I want 
to go very much, but I have not finished my busi- 
ness and it is best for me to stay. I expect to be 
some lonesome. I want you to sit down and write 
me a long letter and tell me all the news and par- 
ticulars of your business, and I will write and an- 
swer it. . . I put a piece of sap sugar into Stearns' 
trunk for Maria. My clothes I have got mended 



48 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

very well. I want a few fashionable dickeys which 
you may send by Stearns, a pair or two of stock- 
ings, if you have them ; if not, no matter about it. 
If anything is done about the school let me know 
it, and also how your money matters stand, how 
much you owe, etc. It would be interesting to me. 
Give my respects to all who inquire. 

Your son, 

Martin. 

Waterville College, July 24, 1838. 

Dear Parents : I had become extremely un- 
easy before I received your last letter. I thought 
you must be all sick or you would not keep me in 
such suspense. I really suffered much, not know- 
ing what your condition was. I am glad to hear 
that father is better, though I fear he is far from 
well. All I can say is, be very careful, and if he 
does not get better or grows worse let me know it, 
and I will come home immediately. Think nothing 
of my duties here, because my duties to my parents 
take precedence of all other duties. Justice de- 
mands this, aside from the debt of gratitude for 
favors received. . . 

Your son, 

Martin. 

Waterville College, November 20, 1838. 

Dear Father : You wish to know about . 

He has been an heirloom here for four or five 
years, has been handed down from class to class. 
He says he will have a degree if he stays fourteen 
years, and I am afraid he won't get it much sooner. 



WATERVILLE — AS A STUDENT 49 

His morals are good and he is a professor of religion 
in good standing. . . Tell Maria she shall have an 
answer to her letter. It was a very good one. 
There was one word misspelled — sale, for sail. 

Your son, 

Martin. 

Waterville College, Nov. 15. 
Dear Father : I received your letter in due 
time. All the fault I find with your letters is that 
they are too short. The last one you sent before 
this was really an apology for a letter. A class- 
mate told me there was a letter in the office for me, 
and away I posted down town to get it. But what 
a letter ! about a fair size for a dunning letter. I was 
really provoked. Really, I don't want you to send 
so much clean paper away up here. Do fill your 
letters up with something. . . We have the very best 
of preaching here. . . Our exegetical exercises on 
Hebrews are very valuable indeed. Give my love 
to all. Good-night. 

Martin. 

Quotations from one more letter will close the 
selections made from the letters of the student. 
These selections have been made with the object of 
portraying his college life, and domestic and per- 
sonal relations and traits, rather than to illustrate 
his interest in public affairs — the correspondence re- 
lating to these requiring often more explanation than 
the limits of this book admit, since it refers to per- 
sons and events almost unknown to this generation. 
It has been in some cases impossible to determine 

E 



50 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

to just what events of a public character reference 
was made, owing to the natural ellipses of a fre- 
quent informal correspondence. The personalities 
of these letters have not been made public in order 
to gratify curiosity, but because so much of genuine 
nobility of heart is revealed in these spontaneous, 
simple utterances of filial and fraternal devotion. 

Waterville, June 21, 1840. 
Dear Father : I was truly happy to hear that 
your health is improving, and that you are getting 
on so well at home. My health is improving 
slowly. When I wrote to you I was much better, 
but I either took a slight cold or a little too much 
exercise, and was not so well afterward. I had 
become very weak, and the slightest thing caused a 
relapse. I am gaining strength steadily but slowly. 
... I am still thinking some about my destination, 
but I give myself no uneasiness about it. The 
folks at New York have concluded that no man but 
a Congregationalist from a Congregational college 
can be a sufficient scholar to serve that dignified 
body, the trustees of New York Academy. Well, 
so be it. . . My desire is to go to Newton without 
delay, but I am willing that the thing should be 
just as Providence dictates. I want you and 
mother to think of it. I should like for you to get 

some stuff and get or some one to make me a 

bosom for commencement, and make it just as she 
thinks looks the best, that is, neatest and most 
tasteful. I am here now on a farm, and work when 
I please and play when I please, and hope thus to 
restore the general tone of my system, which, you 



WATERVILXE — AS A STUDENT 5 1 

know, is all I want or can do for myself. Has 
Maria begun to read French ? Tell her to write 
me a letter, if she has time. Give my respects to 
all the folks, the Jamesons and Mrs. P in par- 
ticular. Write just as soon as you can on the recep- 
tion of this. 

Yours, as ever, 

Martin. 

The foregoing letter was probably the last before 
the closing of his college course. The illness 
referred to in this letter is the real beginning, so 
far as can be learned, of a weakened condition 
which lasted, intermittently, for several years. 
Indeed, the weakness of the stomach to which he 
first refers at this time, became chronic, and re- 
sulted ultimately in death. His later correspon- 
dence with his wife contains frequent mention of 
digestive derangement which evidently occasioned 
her much anxiety and himself some alarm. 

A very important episode occurred at Water- 
ville, during the four years included in Dr. Ander- 
son's college course, a knowledge of which throws 
a strong light on the " staying " qualities of the 
student, and illustrates the loyalty of his spirit, so 
honorably exhibited later in Rochester. 

The college at Waterville became practically 
bankrupt. The president, Dr. Pattison, of whose 
heroic struggles and unselfish action it would be 
impossible to say too much, resigned, believing that 
some other head and hand could do better for the 



52 MARTIN. B. ANDERSON 

college in this crisis than himself. At one time it 
" was virtually decided " to close the doors for want 
of money. At that decision " Anderson asked for 
dismission to a sister college, but o*nly because no 
other alternative remained to him. No sooner was 
the decision to suspend revoked than he gave up all 
thought of leaving. In his own phrase, ' so long 
as a spar should be left standing, he was resolved 
to remain by the imperilled craft.' It would be 
difficult indeed to estimate the value of such loyalty 
at such a time." 

There is no characteristic which awakens more 
enthusiastic admiration than loving loyalty to that 
which needs but cannot command support. A sel- 
fish ambition would have led Dr. Anderson to a 
more prosperous institution. Although Colby has 
been able to forget in later prosperity her early 
reverses, she cannot afford to forget her debt to 
those who stood by her when her very life was in 
jeopardy. 



IV 
WATERV-ILLE— AS A TEACHER 



Only those languages can properly be called dead in 
which nothing living has been writtten. . . Oblivion looks 
in the face of the Grecian Muse only to forget her errand. 
. . . Give to History, give to Political Economy, that 
ample verge the times demand, but with no detriment to those 
liberal Arts which have formed open-minded men and good 
citizens in the past, nor have lost the skill to form them. 

— James Russell Lowell. 



IV 

NEWTON, AND WATERVILLE AS A TEACHER 

A S was said in the last letter, it was now young 
-^~*- Anderson's wish to go to the Theological 
Seminary at Newton, Massachusetts, for a year of 
study in preparation for the work of the Christian 
ministry. Obstacles, such as can be easily 
imagined, stood in the way. He refers, however, 
in letters to his parents, to the remarkable manner 
in which all serious difficulties were removed. 

He entered Newton in the autumn of 1840, and 
remained one year. While there one of his associ- 
ates was Ezekiel Gilman Robinson, later the brill- 
iant and profound teacher and theologian, whose 
recent death removes one of the rarest minds that 
have ever adorned the Christian pulpit or the relig- 
ious class-room. There a lifelong friendship began 
between the two students, and could the veil of the 
future have been rolled back, they might have seen 
themselves co-workers in a new institution soon to 
be established in " the West," as the site of Roches- 
ter was then called. 

Dr. Anderson's letters from Newton are sreneral 
in character and meagre, so far as regards details 
of his work, or references to his teachers or fel- 

55 



56 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

low-students. The president at that time was Rev. 
Ira Chase, D. D., a pioneer in the cause of theo- 
logical education. One of his teachers was Prof. 
Barnas Sears, upon whose resignation of the presi- 
dency of Brown University in later years, Dr. Ander- 
son was called to that position. No letters of this 
year have been attainable except those to his parents, 
but long letters to him from college friends indicate 
that he was beginning the correspondence which 
soon became remarkable in quality and quantity. 
The number of letters that he wrote in middle and 
later life was enormous and unusual in kind for a 
man in his position. Letters to the President of 
the United States, and to other public men, 
letters to educators, to ministers, to business men 
to personal and private friends, to the parents 
of his pupils, and especially to the pupils them- 
selves, present a mass of correspondence which in 
both variety and ability would form a large and in- 
teresting volume. 

The following letters are very similar to those 
already given, but they are so characteristic and 
interesting that quotations from them deserve a 
place here. 

Newton, November 1, 1840. 
Dear Father : Your letter was welcome, I 
assure you. I was upon the point of writing to see 
if I could hear anything from you. It is wrong in 
you to give me so much needless anxiety. If you 
can't get time to write set Maria at it, or send me 



WATERVIIXE — AS A TEACHER 57 

a paper. I want to see a Bath paper once in a 
while. . . I have been into Boston but once since 
I have been here, and I hear no more of Bath than 
if I were in Greenland. 

I somewhat expected to come home at election, 
but I was unable to pay my passage home. Stock- 
bridge wrote to Boston that there were three voters 
here who were not able to pay their passage home ; 
and answer was returned that the Maine people had 
been written to on the subject and no answer 
had been received, and the man who wrote the 
letter said he would pay one fare out of his own 
pocket if we would come to Boston, but I had too 
much State and town pride to come home to vote 
at the expense of the Boston folks, and so I did not 
come. It would have been quite a sacrifice and 
inconvenience to me to come, but if I could have 
come Friday night I would. 

Aside from the great interests pending at the 
election, I almost dread to hear of the manner in 
which the canvass will be carried on. It seems 
that the party in power have determined to keep 
... in power by fair means or foul. 

But enough of politics. . . I am very happily 
situated here . . . and if I had nothing to worry me 
perhaps I should be too well situated. I suffer 
much anxiety on your account, but still I hope for 
the best. . . I want you to write me all about your 
health and business, also the church and Mr. Nott. 
I find he stands very high here among the students. 
One said to me he was, in fact, one of the best 
preachers among the Baptists in Boston. . . 

Yours, etc., 

Martin. 



58 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Newton, November 9, 1 840. 
Dear Father : I received your letter in due 
time. I had also received the one you sent previous 
to the election, on the Tuesday evening after elec- 
tion. As you say Maine has gone right, I am very 
glad that I stayed here. By our papers to-night it 
is rendered highly probable that Harrison is elected. 
There is much interest here in the results of the 
canvass, as there are about seven or eight as stub- 
born Whigs as ever you saw. . . 

Your son, 

Martin. 

Newton, December 11, 1840. 
Dear Father : I received your letter in due 
time. . . My health is as good as ever it was in my 
life. I have a good appetite and weigh one hundred 
and eighty pounds — heavier than I have been in 
six years. . . Tell mother that, notwithstanding her 
prophecies to the contrary, I have got so I can sing 
a tune decently well, with some others to lead. 
We have a singing school in the Institute, which I 
attend. If there is any good chance, I want you 
to send Maria to a singing school this winter. If I 
had gone at her age I might have become a decent 
singer. I should like now to sing a tune with 
Uncle Sterrett some of these evenings. I see that 
the Waterville College subscription has been filled 
up. Good ! Now, if they can get a president, 
they will do well enough. Dr. Pattison will go to 
Providence to settle over his old church and society. 
I suppose John Wayland will go to Waterville. . . 
You have seen the article on Mrs. Stearns that I 
furnished for the " Advocate." What do you think 



WATERVIIXE — AS A TEACHER 59 

of it ? Just let me know. Mr. Nott will do well 
enough in Bath, if he has as good a reputation as 
he has here. Dr. Bolles says there is no clergy- 
man in Boston he would rather hear as a pastor. . . 
Remember me with all kindness to the Jamesons, 
Uncle Sterrett, Hosea Hildreth, and Mr. Nott. 

Yours as ever, 

M. B. Anderson. 

Newton, Feb. 26, 1841. 

Dear Father : . . . I am glad, very glad, to 
hear that you have a slight prospect of a revival of 
religion. I think that you will do better not to call in 
any extraneous aid. I mean, i. e., to have pro- 
tracted meetings. When Christians have labored 
exclusively for religious purposes for a few weeks, 
they very soon come to the conclusion that they 
ought to labor exclusively for their worldly business 
for at least as long a time. When this resolution 
is made the revival spirit is gone at once. The 
past should teach you a good lesson on this subject. 
Let the pastor manage the work and labor your- 
selves under him. Pray much, take away anything 
wrong, and God will bless you. Don't get any 
new-fangled or extraneous matters into the church 
for members to quarrel over. Don't make any un- 
warrantable exertions to draw in people from other 
societies, but ever bear in mind that all substantial 
growth cf your society must come through the holy 
influences and Christian graces of the church. A 
holy church has a moral power that operates on the 
minds of men. 

I think your opinion about the pastor is correct. 
I am surprised to hear every few days some new 



6o MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

testimony to the excellence of Mr. Nott's char- 
acter. . . Dr. Wayland admired Mr. Nott as a 
preacher. . . Do you hear a word from Free- 
port ? If you do, let me know. I know nothing 
about Maine, not half so much as if I was in 
New Orleans or Liverpool. 

Yours, etc., 

Martin. 

The following letter is the last from the semi- 
nary, but contains no reference to his plans for the 
succeeding year. 

Newton, July 20, 1841. 
Dear Father : . . . I have been much en- 
gaged, first in haying, and secondly in writing an ar- 
ticle for the Society of Missionary Inquiry : Subject, 
" Claims of Missions on Political Men." . . I 
want to have that French letter from Maria. It 
would do her great good to write it, and I am out of 
patience in waiting. . . I expect to preach at 
Chelsea the first three weeks of the vacation. 
Granger has some thought of leaving the institu- 
tion, should he find a place that suits him. I 
want you and Mr. Nott to interest yourselves, if 
you have an opportunity, in getting him at Top- 
sham. He would be an addition, a great one, to 
the strength of the Baptist cause in Maine, should 
you get him there. . . Remember me to Mr. 
Nott. I am under great obligations to him for his 
influence over me while at home. He changed 
my idea of gospel preaching. 

Your son, 

M. B. Anderson. 



WATERVILLE — AS A TEACHER 6 1 

In the early autumn of this year he returned to 
Waterville as a tutor, the branches in which he 
gave instruction being Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
matics. He did not give up the purpose of ulti- 
mately being a settled pastor. The want of money 
with which to continue a course of study, the de- 
sire to be near his feeble parents, and, possibly, a 
certain " Lizzie," were reasons almost imperative 
for returning to his Alma Mater for a time. This 
" Lizzie " was not the "Lizzie " of his married life. 
This young lady died during her engagement to 
the young tutor. He filled the position just men- 
tioned until the autumn of 1843, when he was ap- 
pointed to the chair of rhetoric, for which he was 
well fitted. 

In the winter of 1842-3 his health was not 
good, and he thought of going to a Southern cli- 
mate for its restoration. He spent the winter vaca- 
tion in Washington, D. C, supplying the E Street 
Baptist Church during his stay there. It was at 
this time that he had occasion to preach in the 
House of Representatives, and had among his 
hearers men of national reputation. He made a de- 
cided impression as a young man of great promise, 
and was strongly urged to settle there as a pastor. 
He makes no allusions, however, in letters which 
have been preserved, to any impressions which he 
may have made, such as would add to his reputa- 
tion, or affect his future position. He writes to his 
parents in much anxiety, fearing that he has failed 

F 



62 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

to accomplish any good, and with an almost boyish 
interest in home occurrences. The following letter 
from Washington is found among his correspon- 
dence. 

Washington City, Dec. 25, 1842. 
Dear Father : . . . I was glad to hear from 
you that you were all well. With regard to Maria, 
I don't know what to say. I want her to study and 
hear a class, for I think in such circumstances she 
studies more. If you can't get enough to meet 
your payments when they become due, I will meet 
them as far as God gives me the ability, and I will 
do it cheerfully. Keep strong your confidence in 
God, and we ought to trust in him that all will be 
well. This is a strange world, a world of trial. I 
especially ought to have (it) to correct my way- 
wardness. What will become of me next year God 
only knows — the future is all uncertainty. I am 
all the time receiving letters from one and another 
about preaching, and cautioning me about staying 
at Waterville. I want you to pray for me to be 
directed rightly, for no station on earth is desirable 
if it is not the right one. I don't seem to myself 
to be doing any good here. Give my sincere and 
hearty love to Mr. and Mrs. Hildreth. Hosea gave 
me four dollars once when I was poor and needed 
it, and I hope I shall not soon forget it. Remem- 
ber me to Mr. Nott, and to Mrs. Nott in like man- 
ner. I should be glad to be remembered in the 
prayers of the church down there in the vestry. 
Make Maria tell me, circumstantially, all that she 
heard and saw while she was gone. This will 
make her remember better, and teach her to ob- 



WATERVIIXE — AS A TEACHER 63 

serve closely when she goes from home again. As 
always, so now, Your son, 

Martin. 



A letter from his friend, George W. Sampson, — 
later for many years the well-known and honored 
"Dr. Sampson," of Washington, first pastor, and 
then President of Columbian University, — written 
from Washington under date of Feb. 23, 1843, "is 
written to induce you to come to Washington to 
settle as a pastor, as the great object of my writing. 
I should have urged it upon you before I left had I 
known how deeply interested in you the people, 
particularly the more intellectual, had become." 
He lays the matter before Professor Anderson with 
great urgency, using the sort of argument that is 
the most difficult to resist — "that Washington 
needs just such talent as his," etc. In addition to 
the domestic and personal reasons mentioned above 
as among those which influenced him to return to 
Waterville and continue his teaching, instead of 
assuming the charge of a church at this time, a 
weakness of the throat, accompanied by an almost 
entire loss of voice at times, was a nearly insuper- 
able obstacle to his taking upon himself the exac- 
tions of a pastorate, unremitting especially in the 
matter of public speaking. ■ He seems to have had 
no definite time in mind for entering the ministry, 
but to have held himself open to the guiding of the 
providence of God from year to year. In the sum- 



64 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

mer of 1843 he mentioned in a letter his intention, 
if Providence should direct, of returning to Newton 
in the autumn of that year " to stop a year or two, 
and then to settle somewhere, if God gives me my 
voice." But in September of that year he was 
back at Waterville, installed in the chair of rheto- 
ric as a full professor. 

With the acceptance of that position his career 
was really diverted, although he knew it not, from 
that of the gospel preacher to that of the teacher. 
He never held a pastorate, nor was he ordained as 
a minister of the gospel. But although he did not 
have the preacher's title he did the preacher's work. 
He preached from the college platform and from 
the editor's chair, for he was alive with the moral 
and religious zeal that is the first qualification of 
the preacher who is born, not made. Whatever his 
nominal calling he could not evade the instinct that 
made of him a moral instructor. 

In addition to this inborn impulse to elevate and 
stimulate his fellow-men, Dr. Anderson had strong 
points as a preacher of the gospel. He was truly 
Christian in spirit, tremendously earnest in manner, 
clear in thought, forcible in statement, commanding 
in form. In style of expression he was often highly 
rhetorical ; but he never sacrificed directness to 
rhetorical effect. He was too keen a critic not to 
know that the highest rhetorical effect is produced 
by strong simplicity. He had a great deal of per- 
sonal magnetism in the pulpit. " Thou art the 



WATERVIIXE — AS A TEACHER 65 

man " fell upon the hearer's heart as the searching 
truths of the Bible fell upon his ear. 

But even with his unusual gifts as a pulpit orator 
and teacher, it is doubtful whether he would have 
attained equal eminence and exerted as much influ- 
ence as a preacher by profession as by occasional 
discourses. He often said that his religion was 
practical, a principle, a matter of fact — that there 
was nothing about him of the mystic, the specula- 
tor, the sentimentalist. The pulpit can well do 
without the religious sentimentalist, but it cannot 
do without a pervasive and permanent spirituality 
in those whom it admits to its sacred precincts. 
And it demands, also, not only a knowledge of 
human nature, but great power of adaptation to it 
in personal relations. It demands too, a great vari- 
ety in the presentation of truth. As a preacher 
Dr. Anderson lacked range. His power consisted 
largely in the qualities already mentioned, applied 
to the emphatic reiteration of the more familiar 
principles and precepts which underlie and control 
moral and religious practice. These he illustrated 
out of the varied stores of his learning, and drove 
home with a force derived from his own strong 
nature, his gift of intuitive insight, and his experi- 
ence and observation. 

Nor was he a profound biblical scholar. He held 
no opinions blindly, and was a Christian and a Bap- 
tist from deep conviction, but he owed his intellectual 
knowledge of scriptural truth to the strong ortho- 



66 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

dox teaching with which his youth was surrounded, 
rather than to independent investigation. He was 
impregnated by birth with the cardinal doctrines of 
conservative New England religious thought ; and 
the fire of belief, so early lighted, seems never to 
have been dimmed by doubt. His studies rather 
confirmed his faith. 

The New England pulpit of his time, although he 
was himself its product and its warm supporter, was 
not well adapted to put him at his best. At that 
time theology was its forte and foible alike. The 
preacher of that day did not quite reverse the pas- 
sage " If any man will do his will, he shall know of 
the doctrine," but he came near doing so. Doctrinal 
theology was his own meat and drink, and it was 
the food on which he nourished his flock. Dr. An- 
derson was not a theologian. It may be doubted 
whether he had a carefully formulated system of 
theology, such as was exacted of a pastor in that day 
and place, even though it might be but imperfectly 
understood by those most tenacious of its tenets. 
Not that he was ignorant of the formal statements 
of systematized biblical truth. Far from it. He 
had studied in the school of the prophets, and his 
natural disposition would require of him a thorough 
knowledge of the reasons for the faith that was in 
him. He held Christian doctrine with a firm grip. 
But a theologian, in the technical sense of the 
word, he had neither the taste nor the temperament 
to become. 



WATERVIIXE — AS A TEACHER 6j 

At that time too, the sacred office was hedged 
about by conventional barriers which might have 
proved a rather awkward source of restraint to him. 
The preacher of that time looked after souls almost 
exclusively through the channels of sermon and 
of prayer. His work was, in a sense, impersonal, 
and he " dwelt apart." If his soul was not always 
" a star," his walk and conversation were expected, 
and believed, to be chiefly in heaven. Dr. Ander- 
son was not adapted to conventional methods of 
helping his fellow-men. Had he entered the minis- 
try, he would have been to some extent an innova- 
tor. Although he was conservative by nature and 
by training, his practical instincts would have driven 
him into lines of work, common enough to-day, but 
almost unthought of in his young manhood. And 
for innovations he was not well adapted either. 
There was a strain of old-fashioned orthodoxy in 
his blood which would have been forever at war 
with new views, even of methods, in matters pertain- 
ing to religion. 

As a teacher, he was better adapted to the de- 
partment of rhetoric, with its outlying fields of philo- 
logical research, in the department of English es- 
pecially, than to that of the classics. He was not a 
natural linguist, and never became, in the strict in- 
terpretation of the words, a classical scholar. It was 
not only that there was nothing of the "scholasti- 
cus " about him, that he could not have put himself 
into sympathy with the dead grammarian, who 



68 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

While he could stammer 
Settled HotV s business, — let it be, — 

Properly based Oun, 
Gave us the docrine of the enclitic De, 

Dead from the waist down ; 

for the genuine classicist is as far removed from 
pedantry as from ignorance. To emphasize the 
forms of language to the exclusion of its broader 
elements is the peculiarity of the pedant ; but 
there is a chord in the breast of the true lover 
of language that thrills to soft murmurs regarding 
" cases " and "accents," and language has a life 
independent of its uses. There is such a thing as 
a noble ardor in its pursuit, for its own sake. 

So abstract an enthusiasm was not natural to Dr. 
Anderson. To establish a point, to accomplish a 
practical end, he was unweariedly industrious and 
painstaking in investigation. He appreciated too, the 
results of minute learning in departments of study 
whose practical bearing was not immediately in evi- 
dence. Nor was he inaccurate or loose in any of 
his work. On the other hand, he was intolerant of 
these qualities in himself and in all others. When 
the variety of his studies and the quality and quan- 
tity of his results in each is justly weighed, he will 
be found to have earned the praise that belongs to 
the thorough investigator. But accuracy has its 
degrees, and the superlative of " accurate " is 
"exact." Exactness, a spirit which may elude the 
metaphysician, the social economist, even the art- 



WATERVILLE — AS A TEACHER 69 

ist of the modern school, but which is the breath 
of life to the classical scholar if his work has 
value or weight, was not the pervading spirit of his 
studies. 

Nor was the study of language for the sake of 
literature a sufficient reason for its pursuit, al- 
though he valued highly an acquaintance with a 
number of languages because of the importance of 
reading originals. He was very much hampered in 
his own work by his imperfect knowledge of modern 
languages, and would often consult some better 
scholar than himself, saying, " I can get the drift, 
but what I want is the shade of meaning." 

To him language was in fact a tool, to be mas- 
tered as well as might be for the sake, primarily, of 
its ethnological and historical uses. In the address 
already mentioned, delivered before the Convention 
of College Presidents of the State of New York, 
he says : 

We should require (in a college course) knowl- 
edge enough of different tongues to enable the 
pupil to get an idea of the laws and processes com- 
mon to all languages, to give him a basis for under- 
standing the principles of comparative philology — ■ 
a science which is now one of the broadest that 
can come before the mind of a learner, for it bears 
on everything connected with the mental and moral 
development of man. He should have knowledge 
enough of expression in different forms of language 
to understand and apply its laws in studying the 



70 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

development of the human mind. . . We must 
study the languages of the old world in order to 
learn history. To learn history we must trace the 
thought of nations in the words which they used 
to embody it. Take the word " idea/' for instance. 
I defy any man to teach the history of psychology 
without tracing that word in all its modifications 
from Plato to Locke. Around this word gather the 
analyses of human thinking attempted by the great 
philosophers of all time. 

This brief quotation indicates and illustrates the 
nature and the value of his linguistic work. 

His views were broad, and his industry unlim- 
ited. His general reading at this time was bounded 
only by the time which he could command for it. 
History became a favorite branch of study, and he 
performed the valuable service to the college of in- 
troducing it as a specialty into the college course. 
He himself prepared and delivered, in addition to 
his other duties, a course of lectures on historical 
subjects. In this step he was in advance of the 
traditions and customs of the college, and he was 
thought to be too much out of line with the estab- 
lished order of a correct course of study. He be- 
came a little unpopular on account of this innova- 
tion. To this work in the department of history, 
however, he always looked back with satisfaction, 
and with a just pride in having been among the 
first to recognize the importance of this basic 
branch of study, and to assign to it its proper place 



WATERVILLE — AS A TEACHER 7 1 

in a systematic plan of general education. As will 
be seen, history and the historical method were 
increasingly favorite topics with him of investiga- 
tion and instruction. 

His life at Waterville, although laborious and 
hampered by pecuniary anxieties, had its lighter as- 
pects. The following letter to his former college 
associates and friends, Samuel L. Caldwell and 
Oakman S. Stearns, gives a glimpse of the boy 
that was always buried only skin-deep under that 
massive brow. 

Waterville College, February 25, 1844. 
My Dear Friends : God bless you both ! 
Your letter did me good 7 It warmed my heart to 
the very core. I do love old friends. You may 
say that I talk like a school-girl, but I hope that I 
shall be a boy in my feelings as long as I live. I 
sometimes wish that I could see you in my room, 
and have with you a real pow-wow, halloo, and 
laugh, and scuffle, and roll on the bed, and quote 
poetry by the hour, just as we used to do. Cald- 
well, do you remember the old Anthology ? And, 
Stearns, do you remember how you used to kick 
me with your heels ? But ah, " those pleasant 
hours have passed away," as Tom Moore says, but 
not their influence. I don't know but they are as 
real to me now as they were then, for I am some- 
thing of an idealist. But those hours of glee and 
anticipation have passed, and left us to struggle 
with the stern realities of life. Well, so be it. 
We must try and struggle here, or we shall be 
children in the world to come. 



72 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

These hours of hard thinking make a man old in 
body, but manly and vigorous in soul. Were this 
world our only theatre of action, what a waste of 
power there would be. I expect Stearns will be- 
come a great Hebrew, Caldwell a sort of " angelic 
doctor," if I may judge from his part of the letter. 
About Berkely I have a word to say to that same 
Caldwell. You should not have supposed that be- 
cause I recommended Berkely I endorsed every- 
thing that he said. He is an original thinker, that 
is the reason I like him. He is among the two or 
three thinkers on metaphysics in the English lan- 
guage. His mistakes will teach you more than the 
correct statements of other men. If you do not 
have a high opinion of him, read him till you do. 
Above all, don't read his commentators. I ques- 
tion very much whether they have fully understood 
him. You will do well to read a little of Mal- 
branche's "Recherche sur La Verite. ,: He, Mal- 
branche, follows in the main the views of his 
master, Descartes. Berkely simplifies and carries 
out some of the same fundamental doctrines. 

The above letter is without signature, and was, 
probably, never sent. 

The following letter, of a little earlier date than 
the foregoing, tells the story of his attachment to 
the young lady already mentioned. 

Waterville College, Nov. 6, 1843. 

My Dear Father : I should have been glad to 

hear that you were better, but I was glad to hear 

that you were no worse. I often think of you at 

home, especially during this rainy, cold weather. I 



WATERVIIXE — AS A TEACHER 7$ 

feel for you, sympathize with you, and am willing 
to do all for you that I can. . . I have made my- 
self responsible for the eighteen dollars which you 
mentioned. I will see that proper receipts are 
given and kept for you. I have enclosed a draft 
on Suffolk Bank for eighty-two dollars, which with 
the eighteen dollars you already have, will make up 
one hundred dollars. I wish you to acknowledge 
the receipt of it as soon as possible. I am glad to 
hear that Maria is doing well. She must study 
well. . . My throat is, on the whole, I think im- 
proving ; still, these long rain storms are very bad 
for it. Lizzie's health is, she thinks, better on the 
whole than it was a year ago. I was glad to have 
you inquire about her. I know you will all love 
her when you come to know her. She ... is kind- 
hearted and affectionate, prudent, has no romantic 
or extravagant notions of life, has a fund of plain 
good sense, and she is unostentatiously pious. 
From what I have seen of her habits, I think I may 
live more economically with her than with many 
whose circumstances were poor. I have not de- 
ceived her as to my prospects and condition, and I 
hope she will be prepared to meet them. I have 
had much to trouble me this term, as you must 
know, but her kindness and affection have been a 
solace to me greater than words can express. She 
wishes me to send her love to you all. . . Matters 
go on with tolerable smoothness in college now. 
We have as yet no pastor. If you can't keep Mr. 
Nott, the people here want him very much. . . 
Give my love to him, and to all who inquire. God 
bless you all. Your son, 

Martin. 

G 



74 MARTIN B. ANDERSON . 

In May of the next year, 1844, his father writes 
of Elizabeth's severe illness, and in one letter says : 
"Give our warmest regards to Elizabeth, if she is 
still living." Sometime during that year she died. 
The only reference to her death found in the cor- 
respondence is contained in a letter to Prof. Ander- 
son from his friend, E. L. Magoon. In this letter 
Dr. Magoon refers to the "item of personal afflic- 
tion " mentioned by Prof. Anderson, and by further 
allusions it becomes clear that this affliction is the 
death of his promised wife. 

During these years he was not obliged to remain 
where he was for lack of opportunities to go else- 
where. A letter dated July 28, 1845, from his 
former friend and president, Dr. Robert E. Patti- 
son, who was at that time a professor in the West- 
ern Baptist Theological Institute, at Covington, 
Ky., intimates to Prof. Anderson that he is to be 
called to the chair of biblical criticism in that in- 
stitution, the position to include instruction in both 
Hebrew and Greek. Dr. Pattison considers his 
"peculiar talents to be just the ones adapted for 
this position." He also says, "the Board has 
felt it to be almost a necessity that the new in- 
structor should be a Southern man, but I told that 
body that you were a virtual Kentuckian, and that 
it was only by an accident that you were born in 
Maine." 

A letter from Boston about this time asserts 
that Prof. Anderson is just the man to succeed a re- 



WATERVII^E — AS A TEACHER 75 

tiring pastor in that city, and at this time he writes 
to his father of having been invited to " candi- 
date " in the city of New York, an invitation 
which he promptly declined. Numerous requests 
to deliver lectures and to act on important " com- 
mittees," to preach, and in various ways to serve 
his State and his denomination, indicate his grow- 
ing reputation and the versatility of his talents. 
In the meantime, he prosecuted his studies with 
unflagging zest. A letter from the American 
philologist, Joseph E. Worcester, dated " Cam- 
bridge, June 14, 1844," refers to a letter from him, 
to which he had " intended to give earlier atten- 
tion." He says: " You ask what dictionary con- 
tains my maturest studies on the subject of pro- 
nunciation, and also request me to designate a few 
of the best English and American books that 
would be valuable for you to consult in giving in- 
struction in verbal criticism of the English lan- 
guage." While teaching in college, Dr. Anderson 
gave a great deal of attention to researches in the 
department of English philology. 

In November, 1845, the family removed from 
Bath to Waterville, and there, three years later, 
Mrs. Anderson died. About two years after the 
change of the family home, Prof. Anderson went to 
New York and preached in the Tabernacle Baptist 
Church. His visit proved a very important one to 
himself and to one other. It was at this time that 
he met the young lady with whom about a year later 



j6 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

he entered into what may be truly described as a 
real and a most beautifully ideal union. The full 
significance of that meeting was revealed slowly, 
for only time can tell the whole story of a meeting, 
a wooing, and a wedding. The supplementing of 
one nature by another was perhaps never more 
satisfactorily achieved than in this marriage. 

So in our dreams some glimpse appears, 

Though soon it fades again, 
How other lands and times and spheres 

Might make us other men ; 
How half our being lies in trance, 

Nor joy nor sorrow brings, * 
Unless the hand of circumstance, 

Shall touch the latent strings. 



V 
ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON 



Not but that you know me ! Lo, the moon's self! 
Here in London, yonder late in Florence, 
Still we find her face, the thrice transfigured. 

She would turn a new side to her mortal, 

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman — 

What were seen ? None knows ; none ever shall know. 
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her. 

— Robert Browning. 



V 



ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON 

NO Life of Dr. Anderson would be complete 
without a consideration of her who entered 
subtly and wholly into the being of him by whose 
side she walked as wife. 

Elizabeth Mary Gilbert was born in New York 
city, August 12, 1818. Her parents were natives 
of England, and their opinions and habits had re- 
ceived an English stamp. Her mother's name was 
Alice Broughton, and her father was Deacon Joshua 
Gilbert, a man of strong character, sterling worth, 
and large means. They were Baptists by training 
and by conviction. As has been suggested in an 
admirable sketch of Mrs. Anderson by Mrs. Emil 
Kuichling, the phrase, "an English Baptist," may 
mean a great deal. To be a Baptist in England, 
three-quarters of a century ago, stood for convic- 
tions, and the courage of them. There was no 
lack of them in Deacon Gilbert's home in New 
York. This home was permeated by an atmos- 
phere religious, intelligent, and refined. 

There were but three children : a son Joseph, 
still living and residing in Brooklyn, N. Y. ; a 
daughter Ann, who married a gentleman named 

79 



8o MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Gilbert, but in no way related to the family of his 
wife, and Elizabeth, much younger than her sister, 
the subject of this chapter. This younger daughter 
was educated in the best of the city schools, and if, 
in acccordance with the fashion of the day, she 
studied music more than mathematics, there was no 
lack of sound thinking and discussion around her at 
home, which awakened her interest in subjects of 
importance. She was trained with a scrupulous 
care, the recital of which would sound, to the ma- 
jority of the young persons of to-day, like a tale 
projected out of a distorted imagination. Stockton 
had not then enlightened children " On the Train- 
ing of Parents," and painfully scriptural notions 
prevailed on the subject, in the Gilbert family at 
least. Her English mother and an aunt, who after- 
ward became a second mother, were the careful 
guardians of her domestic and social life. She used 
to tell, with a tender smile, of the grave reproof 
she received when, on one never-to-be-forgot- 
ten occasion, she so far either mistook or disre- 
garded the proprieties as to substitute " mitts " for 
gloves ; and another, when the inevitable apron of 
the old-time little girl was not of the required 
length and style. From this minute personal train- 
ing resulted the exquisite perfection of dress and 
general appearance that marked her throughout 
life. Her soul was no less watchfully guarded. 
She was the regular companion of her father at the 
Sabbath and weekly services of the church, and 



ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON 8 1 

the early habit and love of church-going were never 
relaxed. 

Her face was not beautiful, even in her girlhood, 
with regularity of feature, or with brilliancy of 
color. But the outline of each feature and of the 
whole was of remarkable delicacy ; her expression 
was winning, and every look and movement marked 
her as the embodiment of refinement. She had a 
natural dignity and grace of manner to which her 
rather formal training added that finest charm, best 
described as an "air of high-breeding." She had 
in mature years a stateliness of bearing that was 
redeemed from stiffness by the willowy flexibleness 
of her form. Ease and self-possession are, now-a- 
days, held to be somewhat at variance with for- 
mality, but they are to some extent essential to 
elegance of manner. Mrs. Anderson radiated a 
subtle atmosphere of true gentility. An old friend 
once said of her, " I should know her to be a lady 
born and bred if I had only sat behind her once in 
church." Some persons, before they had become 
accustomed to her fine reserve, thought her cold. 
Nothing was farther from the truth. She had a 
most susceptible temperament, a nature literally at 
the mercy, for the time, of the tears or smiles of 
those around her, although she might keep her own 
feelings in abeyance. She was extremely artistic. 
Sound, color, and form found her responsive to their 
best effects. Her taste in the adornment of her 
home was sometimes criticised as severe, but it was 



82 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

eminently chaste. Her recognition of a work of 
genuine art was so sure and so quick, that many 
gifts of rare articles adorned her cabinets. In this 
she and her husband were in perfect accord. 

She was in the freshness of her youth and 
charms when that " young man from Maine" met 
her at her father's house in New York. The 
young man, Prof. Martin B. Anderson, had come 
down from Waterville, where he was a teacher, on 
business connected with his profession. He 
preached in the Baptist church which the Gilbert 
family attended, and was invited to their home. 
The family was socially prominent and was con- 
nected with other families of equal standing. Mr. 
Gilbert's sister was the wife of William Colgate, 
whose gifts in former years, and now continued 
by his sons, have done much to build up and main- 
tain Madison University, recently re-named in honor 
of the family of its benefactors, Colgate University 

It was the most natural thing in the world that 
the rising young Baptist teacher and preacher 
should be entertained at the house of this promi- 
nent Baptist layman. It is difficult to say whether 
such " accidental meetings " seem more wonderful 
or natural to youthful lovers. He came, they saw, 
and he ultimately conquered. Never did extremes 
more truly seem to meet than when that tall, rug- 
ged offshoot of a Maine ship-yard met the dainty, 
polished product of as conventional a circle as was 
to be found in this country. 



ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON 83 

But there was something in each that suited the 
other. It is not often that the elements which 
really make or mar a marriage are patent to 
lookers-on, even to those who stand the nearest, 
and when Prof. Anderson became Miss Gilbert's 
lover, there was some opposition to his suit. There 
was another, reared in the same circle, rich, and 
better adapted, as some thought, to be a congenial 
husband for this delicate, city-bred girl. When, 
however, the young lady announced her choice, 
and with a strength of will scarcely expected to be 
found in her fragile form, adhered to it as her final 
one, the parents approved and the engagement took 
place. The years vindicated her decision. Even 
she could not have divined how rare a union that 
was to be which she so resolutely entered upon. 
Mr. Gilbert died soon after the young people became 
engaged. Not long after the death of her husband, 
Mrs. Gilbert's failing health made an early marriage 
seem desirable. Elizabeth, therefore, yielded to the 
urgency of her friends, and was married sooner than 
she had appointed, quietly, at her brother's home 
in Brooklyn. 

Words can scarcely exaggerate the inward love- 
liness of the woman whom it was Dr. Anderson's 
blessed destiny to have for, as he often called her, 
his " better self." Such women as she mold men 
by very force of gentleness, because their gentle- 
ness is the outgrowth and evidence of character. 
" Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 



84 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

are lovely, whatsoever things are gracious," come 
to the mind at the mention of her name. She en- 
tered into the slightest and the deepest experience 
of her husband's life, making each her own. But 
her individuality was so strong that she was not a 
satellite. She gave as much as she received of in- 
fluence and support, and by virtue of her courage, 
her tact, her faith, and her admirable judgment in 
public as well as private matters, she became her 
husband's most trusted confidante and adviser. In 
the whole course of their married life, by corres- 
pondence often, when important matters came be- 
fore him in his absence from her, he conferred 
minutely with her as to his decisions. 

Although the brightness of that evening mar- 
riage hour was shadowed by apprehensions of com- 
ing loss and change, to Dr. Anderson it must 
have always seemed, in later years even more than 
in the freshness of manly affection, the happiest 
hour of his life. The mother died soon after the 
marriage took place. The young professor took his 
bride to Waterville, where began their long, and as 
it proved, their scarcely even sundered union. 
The year of this marriage was marked by four 
bereavements. Deacon Gilbert and his wife and 
a sister of the former, who had been a beloved 
member of the Gilbert family, were taken from 
the circle of Mrs. Anderson's kindred, and Pro- 
fessor Anderson's mother died during the same 
year. His father and the daughter, Maria, were 



ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON 85 

keeping house, while the professor had rooms 
in the dormitory of the college. Mrs. Anderson 
took a house and united the two little families. 
The sketch referred to earlier in this chapter 
says : " She often told in after years how she enjoyed 
arranging this house, fitting furniture and carpets 
to new places, and giving, as we know she did, such 
touches of grace and elegance as a woman of taste 
may. She often told too, of the quaint characters 
she met, and of the unlikeness of the peo- 
ple of Maine to those among whom she had 
lived. But she had many of her own friends visit 
her, and seldom was the Maine home without a 
young lady cousin from New York. Thus she at 
once began to exercise that gracious hospitality 
for which she was so remarkable to the end of her 
life." 

The life at Waterville was a time of comparative 
quiet, so far as stirring public activities were con- 
cerned, but it was marked, as has been seen, by 
domestic incidents of the greatest importance. The 
time of their marriage was August, 1848. The re- 
maining two years of Prof. Anderson's stay there 
were a good deal broken by the gradual opening 
before him of his coming work in New York. The 
elements of storm and stress were always present 
in his soul, and they were soon to find occasion for 
unusual agitation. Repose of mind or body was 
scarcely possible to him. He was especially fortu- 
nate that as his sphere of action became more diffi- 

H 



86 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

cult and more perplexing-, he had the constant 
presence and comradeship of a spirit so finely 
poised and so serene as was that of his wife. As 
his position in the denomination rose in importance 
she proved of inestimable strength to him. Her 
love for her church was not bigotry, but loyalty. 
She became by piety and fidelity a denominational 
power wherever she made her home. Her air of 
distinction and her culture of mind would have 
adorned any circle, but her ambitions were limited 
by the range of her own and her husband's duties. 
The university received scarcely less of her thought 
and interest than it did of his. With some of the 
students she came into personal relationship. She 
had a sympathy with them that would have aided 
them far more than her opportunities allowed. 
They reverenced her and deemed her the embodi- 
ment of cultured Christian womanhood. One of 
the attractions of the presidential mansion at the 
commencement levees was the gracious manner 
with which, by the side of her husband, Mrs. An- 
derson dispensed its hospitality. It was a merciful 
providence that he did not linger long after she had 
gone. He could not have borne it. So much had 
she been to him that her going brought the bitter- 
ness of death. It was fitting that united in life as 
they were, in death they should not be divided. 

This inadequate tribute to her cannot be more ap- 
propriately closed than by a quotation from a letter 
written for her by Dr. Anderson, because of her 



ELIZABETH GILBERT ANDERSON 87 

illness at the time, to a cousin whose wife had just 
died. 

This cousin, Mr. Edward Gilbert, now of New- 
ton, Kansas, and his wife and children had been 
and were always very intimately associated with 
Mrs. Anderson. The terms in which Dr. Anderson 
refers to the friend taken away describe the feel- 
ings of all who knew Mrs. Anderson, and speak 
with peculiar force coming from his own pen. 

After some preliminary explanations and words 
of personal reference, he says : " All who knew the 
departed as we did were impressed most deeply by 
her rare qualities of intellect and her marvelous 
capacity for sympathy with all that was pure and 
elevated in thought and emotion. She at once at- 
tracted a casual acquaintance by the simple elegance 
of her manner, and the intelligence, vivacity, and 
culture which were manifested in her conversation. 
Those qualities were pervaded and harmonized by 
the glow and warmth of a sincere Christian faith." 
He speaks of her as having " illustrated and exem- 
plified the noblest elements of life and character 
possible to womanhood," and refers to "the legacy 
of elevating and controlling memories which death 
itself cannot take away. Those memories will be- 
come constituent elements in your moral life. The 
lessons of her active life are closed, but their 
memory will grow brighter and their control over 
us more sacred and authoritative as time wears 
away." 



88 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

No one who entered into the " House Beautiful " 
of Mrs. Anderson's character with appreciation, 
who shared her high ideals and learned the solution 
of some of life's most puzzling problems from her 
wise and tender words will fail to echo these words 
and will apply them to herself. Few women have 
inspired deeper affection, and 

Chance cannot change that love, nor time impair. 



VI 
AS EDITOR 



Years when thy heart was bold, thy hand was strong, 

And quick the thought that moved thy tongue to speak ; 

And willing faith was thine, and scorn of wrong 
Summoned the sudden crimson to thy cheek. 

— William Cullen Bryant. 



VI 

AS EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK RECORDER 
185O-I853 

"THE New York Recorder," a Baptist weekly 
J- newspaper, published in the city of New 
York, was looking in 1848-9 for an editor and 
owner. Dr. Sewall S. Cutting was to leave the 
position, and it was not easy to find a man to suc- 
ceed him. His cultivated mind and genial spirit 
had put their impress upon the paper. The post 
to be vacated was an important one. Propositions 
were made to Prof. Anderson to take the paper in 
charge, and he, in connection with Rev. James S. 
Dickerson, D. D., became its editor and proprietor. 
Dr. Dickerson was related to Mrs. Anderson. He 
was a man of rare purity and force of character, 
and "possessed unusual business tact and sagacicy." 
He was several years younger than the professor, 
and the enterprise looked somewhat dubious, con- 
sidering the youth of the two proprietors and their 
entire inexperience in the management of a news- 
paper. Dr. Dickerson was more especially the 
financier of the firm, and in this position, as in 
every other that he held, he exhibited unwearied 
industry K and admirable judgment, in addition to lit- 
erary gifts already recognized, of a high order. 

91 



92 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

The strength of the new editor's hand was felt 
at once. A glance over the early numbers of the 
"Recorder" shows "leaders" whose force and 
finish were not surpassed in any published news- 
paper. Their range is vast. They give promi- 
nence to the topics that were then commanding 
the especial attention of the denomination which 
the paper represented, but they are by no means 
limited to these. 

The three subjects prominently before the minds 
of the Baptist denomination were " Revision," 
"Removal," and "Foreign Missions." A sketch 
of what is implied in the first two of these is given 
a little later, and of Dr. Anderson's position with 
reference to them. With the work of foreign mis- 
sions, which did not then, as now, enlist the united 
energies of the church, he was in hearty accord, 
and was a powerful advocate of its claims in his 
columns. A short quotation will illustrate his style 
and spirit in discussing the subject. It must be re- 
membered that opinions and expressions of this 
kind, were not then the universal sentiment of the 
church. They represent the independence, as well 
as the zeal of the writer. 

A WORD ABOUT MISSIONS. 

The work of missions is founded upon the Sav- 
iour's unrepealed and dying command. The fit- 
ness and propriety of this command rest upon the 
Scripture doctrine of the unity of the human spe- 
cies. In this is involved the universal and essen- 



AS EDITOR 93 

tial brotherhood of man, and out of the relation 
arises the duty enjoined by Christ upon his fol- 
lowers. If there is aught in Christian hope, in 
Christian morality, in Christian civilization that is 
cheering, or pure, or conducive to material or spir- 
itual well-being, we are bound by all the obligations 
of natural and revealed law to engage heart and soul 
in the work of Christian missions. . . However 
we may differ in the "accidents" of our condition, 
— in language, in color, physical condition, or intel- 
lectual training, — there is one thing in which we 
can all agree, and in which we all sympathize ; 
this is, in the deep and ineradicable consciousness of 
having sinned against God. The hope of averting 
the consequences of sin by personal deeds or per- 
sonal sufferings is the ground thought of every 
system of heathen religion. In the impulses aris- 
ing from the depths of this consciousness we find 
the origin of priest and sacrifice, temple and ritual, 
throughout the world. The cry of the old pa- 
triarch of Uz, which comes to us wafted across 
thirty or forty centuries of time, " I have sinned ; 
what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of 
men ? " has found an echo or counterpart in every 
human breast. . . In the hope of stilling this cry 
of the heart, the fires of Moloch were kindled. For 
this the Roman buried his victims, while still alive, 
within the walls of the Forum. For this the Celt 
burned his colossal figure of osier twigs filled with 
living men. For this the Hindoo bends his body 
beneath his idol's car. . . All that is fearful in 
superstition, all that is degrading in the rites of false 
religion, have their origin in the attempt to meet 
the deep consciousness of ill-desert for sin against 



94 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

God. Christian reader, remember the test of the 
final judgment : " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of 
the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me." 

The following is an extract from a long and im- 
pressive article on 

REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 

It is not to be denied that there are many per- 
sons in our churches, who have lost, to some de- 
gree, their confidence in the good effects of revivals 
of religion. These suspicions have not been openly 
stated, but still they have affected the minds of 
those who entertained them. The enemies of re- 
ligion have brought into notice all the evils which, 
necessarily or otherwise, have connected them- 
selves with revivals. The keenest weapons of ridi- 
cule have been made to bear against them. " Phi- 
losophy," falsely so called, both spiritual and mate- 
rial, has been called upon to sap the foundations of 
our faith in the great doctrine of regeneration by 
.the Hoi}' Spirit on the individual mind. Revivals 
are the abomination of the infidel and the formalist 
alike, for their systems wither and die under their in- 
fluence. We have sometimes thought that Christians 
themselves have unwittingly given force to these 
skeptical objections, by representing that the opera- 
tion of God's Spirit in a revival of religion is differ- 
ent from all ordinary workings, that in them it oper- 
ates without law and even contrary to law, both of 
the Divine economy and of the human mind. 

A careful attention to this subject will show that 
what are called revivals of religion are not open to 
the philosophical objections of infidels, and that 
there is no necessity for Christians to view them as 



AS EDITOR 95 

isolated, unrelated facts which take place by virtue 
of a suspension of all the ordinary movements of 
the Divine government. Instead of being the ex- 
ception to the general rule they form the ordinary 
methods of the Spirit's action. They may appear 
under various aspects and under various modifying 
circumstances, but the main facts are always the 
same. 

From the day of Pentecost until now there have 
been special seasons when religious truth seemed 
to be clothed with unusual and extraordinary power 
over the hearts of men ; when all the obstacles 
arising from the depravity of the human heart have 
seemed to be overcome at once by instrumentalities 
which have before been utterly powerless, and the 
simplest exhibitions of gospel truth have become as 
the fire and the hammer to the rock. . . 

Every scholar knows that his progress in the 
acquisition of mental power or range of knowledge 
is anything but uniform. He is a slave to the body, 
to the variations of external nature, and to those 
numerous circumstances that he can explain only 
by referring them directly to the providence of God. 
He cannot always command his powers ; the condi- 
tions under which they act pass from his control ; 
the eloquent tongue stammers, the power of thought 
fails, his conceptions become vague and indistinct, 
and he learns his dependence upon God for the use 
of the faculties with which he has been endowed. 
Often some influence of which he has no knowl- 
edge brings his soul into the freest and intensest 
action. 

— The shadows lift 
From the waked spirit airily and swift. 



• 



96 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

An unwonted vigor is imparted to his mind ; this 
acts upon the body, and the body in turn reacts 
upon the spirit, till he feels conscious of a power 
that could almost remove mountains. He moves 
about amid the heretofore barren facts of science 
and of life with a lightness of step and a clearness 
of vision that amazes him. He occupies higher 
ground of observation ; after toil and labor he has 
arrived at a new point of view ; he takes larger 
fields of vision than ever before, and the magnifi- 
cence and newness of the objects within this grand 
horizon frequently cause the whole soul to tremble 
at the vastness of its range of vision. . . 

Thousands of facts in the history of science 
and literature and art could be given to confirm 
these statements. They are the necessary results 
of the connection of the mind with the body. It 
is by impulses, by leaps so to speak, that the mind 
makes progress in power, in conception, in large- 
ness of view. The truth is that the mind is, in its 
severest exercise, too strong for the physical sys- 
tem. The body cannot endure for any length of 
time the intensest possible action of the informing 
spirit. The greatest efforts of the orator are the 
result of an expenditure of nervous force that no 
frame can endure for any length of time ; yet these 
extraordinary efforts give an increase of power, an 
intellectual impulse, that will last through eternity. 

Now when an individual Christian, or a church, 
is led to bring the great and startling facts of our 
religion before the mind and look at them with 
steady seriousness, the result is that they increase 
in religious knowledge and in power of religious 
emotion. . . The distinguishing doctrines of the 



AS EDITOR 97 

gospel become more dear ; the way of salvation 
more plain ; their love to Christ and his church 
more ardent ; in fact they have accomplished a new 
stage of the toilsome journey to Mount Zion. It 
may be an infirmity of our nature that this state of 
exhilaration and clearness of view does not always 
continue, but similar facts are seen in all kinds of 
mental activity. The body must flag, with weari- 
ness when the spirit breathes the difficult air of 
these mountain-tops of heavenly truth ; the eye of 
sense must become dim, when it drinks in too long 
the full blaze of the Sun of Righteousness. 

This unusual sense of divine things is often felt 
by a church when it is impossible to attribute it 
to any known antecedent. An unseen and silent 
power passes among them. It wakes up the dying 
emotions of the soul ; it impresses truth upon the 
heart ; it gives a strange and unusual power to the 
ministry of the word. Truths, hitherto barren and 
lifeless, seize upon the mind. Thought begets 
emotion. . . Eternal things become realities. They 
take a living form and substance before the eyes. . . 
The sovereignty of grace and the freedom of the 
human will meet and are, as a matter of fact, rec- 
onciled to each other. To him who has had a 
deep experience of the religious life, who realizes 
the lost condition of man without the gospel, such 
a revival of religion is the richest purchase of 
Christ's death. It is a pledge for the fulfillment of 
the rapt visions of the prophets ; it is the answer- 
ing of the prayer, "Thy Kingdom come"; it is 
a foretaste of the joys that eye hath not seen — ■ 
that ear hath not heard ; it is a goblet from the 
river of the water of life ; it is a prelude to the 

i 



98 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

ravishing harmonies of the new song of the re- 
deemed. 

Not only on religious and denominational sub- 
jects does he employ his eloquent and vigorous pen. 
No current topic of importance eluded or was 
evaded by him. Thackeray was in this country 
giving lectures on the works of the early English 
novelists. The " Recorder " severely, but courte- 
ously, arraigned him, or more exactly, the publica- 
tions which advertised and approved his selection 
of subjects, as extending an influence which is, " in 
its totality, evil and only evil." He says : 

It is proper here to state that we make these 
remarks in no feeling of hostility to Mr. Thackeray. 
We have read with interest a large proportion of 
his works, and have found much that we can sym- 
pathize with both in style and thought. We like 
his manly hatred of shams and hypocrisy. We 
like his exposures of the fashionable villainy of 
English high life. We like his idiomatic, manly, 
and straightforward English ; to hear it is a relief 
after the antithetical conceits and galvanized brill- 
iancy of the fashionable favorites of the lecture- 
room. Our object is not to criticize Mr. Thackeray 
or his works. . . Our business is with the writings 
to which his lectures have given a new and unprec- 
edented circulation. . . We believe unhesitatingly 
that the result of such study would be, in its total- 
ity, evil and only evil. It is a matter of fact that 
the lectures of Mr. Thackeray have increased the 
demand for these works to an indefinite extent. 



AS EDITOR 99 

We hesitate not to say that this is a cause of regret 
to all good men. And although they were delivered 
in a church, and have, in their subjects and detail, 
met the approbation of parish clergymen, and relig- 
ious and literary editors, we feel compelled to speak 
as we have, and we reaffirm all and singular of the 
views we have heretofore expressed on this subject. 

Dr. Anderson is equally elevated in tone and 
fearless in spirit whatever secular topic he dis- 
cusses. The strongest and ablest of the daily 
metropolitan newspapers are treated with no more 
deference than the weakest and most obscure, if 
they arouse his strictures. A few of the more im- 
portant topics of a general nature which he con- 
siders are, " Mr. Dickens and the Sunday Mails," 
in which he shows Mr. Dickens' inconsistent posi- 
tion on that subject ; " Qualifications of a Professor 
of History," "Circumstantial Evidence," suggested 
by the trial of Professor Webster for the murder of 
his friend Dr. Parkman ; and " Consociationism in 
Connecticut," a stirring review of the trial of Dr. 
Horace Bushnell for heresy and its underlying 
principles. 

There are articles on purely literary topics that 
reveal a thorough and discriminating literary taste, 
surprising, considering the writer's limited opportu- 
nities for literary culture outside of his own read- 
ing. 

An extract from a review of Sir Egerton Brydges' 
edition of Milton illustrates the style of his literary 



IOO MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

criticism. After giving a running account of the 
various annotated editions of Milton, and indicating 
the special value of each and the corresponding de- 
fects, he says : 

... It is indeed very difficult for a thorough-going 
English churchman to understand the position of 
Milton, as an Independent in religion and a repub- 
lican in politics. The vehement scorn with which 
he viewed the Church and the Court ; the intoler- 
ant pride with which he demolished the pretensions 
which they set up of absolute authority over the 
body and conscience, excite in their mind a repul- 
sion that nothing but the most transcendent genius 
could overcome. The truth about the character of 
Milton lies between two extremes. He had his 
share of what are called the infirmities of genius. . . 
But whatever may have been his errors of head or 
heart, we may without hesitation believe him to 
have been imbued with the noblest and purest ele- 
ments of our faith. His contempt of religious 
formalism ; his exalted conceptions of the Divine 
nature ; his austere morality ; his profound and 
reverent study of the Bible ; his heartfelt recogni- 
tion of the influence of the Holy Spirit, all lead us 
to believe that he had in reality drunk in his loftiest 
inspiration from " Siloa's brook that flowed fast by 
the oracles of God." The vast stores of his learning 
were fused in his mind, and gave a distinct character 
to the wondrous composite of his poetry. He 
studied with all the zeal and reverence of a kindred 
spirit the poetry and art of the Greeks, and with 
a deeper reverence and sympathy that of the 
Hebrews. These two elements formed the basis of 



AS EDITOR IOI 

his culture. The sensuous beauty and faultless 
symmetry of the Greek literature, and the awe- 
inspiring sublimity that swells " in seven-fold 
chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies " 
through the pages of the Hebrew poets, were har- 
monized and united by the genius of Milton. 
Hence he retains the severe taste and statuesque 
beauty of form that charms in the Greek tragedy, 
while he approaches in sublimity and breadth of 
outline the prophecies of Isaiah, and in human 
sympathy and tenderness the Psalms of the sweet 
singer of Israel. The literature of Italy and the 
romances of the Middle Ages in which he was 
deeply read, had an influence on his mind ; but 
they did not affect it powerfully, or essentially 
modify his genius. . . While his genius has been 
universally acknowledged, he has never been a 
popular poet. He is more praised than studied. 
He sits in the Pantheon of poets like the Jupiter of 
Phidias among the lesser divinities. The sublimity 
and strength of his conceptions give to his greatest 
work an apparently hard and rugged outline. . . 
Capable as he has shown himself to be in his 
choruses and the Allegro and Penseroso of the 
sweetest and most ravishing melody of verse, his 
natural rhythm was the organ tone that sends its 
thrill along the buttressed walls of the lofty temple 
till the topmost spire quivers with its mighty vibra- 
tions. 

Historical and educational subjects receive a 
large share of attention. From a striking article 
on " Theological Education," the following extracts 
are made : 



102 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

In the midst of all the energy that has been put 
forth in behalf of a general education for the rising 
ministry, there seems to be a lack of zeal for that 
portion of their education which is strictly profes- 
sional in character. Of the necessity of a general 
acquaintance with the principles of science and 
literature there seems to be no doubt. But there 
are many who give a reluctant and grudging sup- 
port to strictly theological education. . . Never 
since the days of Origen has this demand been 
greater than at the present time. The great work 
of carrying the gospel to the heathen has been un- 
dertaken with a vigor unequalled since the times of 
the apostles. Thousands of languages are waiting 
to bear in their accents the message of mercy to 
the lost. A thousand Judsons are needed at this 
very hour to enter upon the work of translation. 
These men must not be novices. They should be 
men upon whose minds have been concentrated the 
results of all the biblical learning that has been ac- 
cumulated from the time of Erasmus and Reuchlin 
to the present. . . Where are such men to be 
trained but in our theological schools ? Who are 
prepared to assume the arduous task of being 
leaders to such men, except those honored names 
whose laborious days and nights have been given to 
concentrated labor upon those languages that con- 
tain the original records of our faith ? It is quite 
easy to talk flippantly about the dried-up gerund 
grinder, who denies himself the pleasures of social 
life and the free air of heaven that he may delve 
among Hebrew roots and Greek particles. . . This 
delving brings up ingots more precious than any 
that roll down the river-beds of the El Dorado of 



AS EDITOR 103 

the West. . . It assures us that we are not giving 
heed to some monkish legend or idle tale of the 
rabbins when we follow the rapt visions of Isaiah, 
or thrill with pious feeling at the strains of David ; 
read the awful story of Calvary, or listen to the 
love-inspired eloquence of Paul. 

It is difficult to avoid crowding the pages of this 
book with editorials from the columns of the 
" Recorder." The writer's style is so vivid that the 
events of a half-century ago are as real as occur- 
rences recorded in " The Examiner," the successor 
of the " Recorder," of a week ago. The paper took 
high rank at once, and commanded the respect of 
the religious and secular press, and of the reading 
public of all denominations. In 1853, Rev. Edward 
Bright, D. D., became its editor and proprietor, and 
under its name of "The Examiner," it still holds a 
leading place among religious weekly newspapers, 
although death has eliminated the controlling mind 
of Dr. Bright. 

With Dr. Anderson's career clearly in view, the 
reader of the " New York Recorder" while it was 
under his editorship is doubtful whether the most 
widely effective, as well as the most brilliant work 
of his life, was not performed in the columns of 
that paper. His position there was well adapted to 
the drawing out of his best powers. Conspicuous 
and influential, it was exactly the post for so fear- 
less and so right-minded a man as he. He was a 
voice crying, not in a desert, but where at the pres- 



104 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

ent time he was much more needed, in a metrop- 
olis, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." He was a 
keen observer and a wise commentator on public 
matters, in fact a practical statesman, bound by no 
party, hampered by no conditions, afraid of no con- 
stituents, responsible to no " bosses." 

The topics which he treats in his articles are not 
so profound as most of those which he considered 
in his later isolated papers. They were naturally 
chiefly current topics. But they indicate and dis- 
play a weight and depth of thought, an intellectual 
strength, a moral soundness, a reserve of learning, 
and a mastery of English diction, that give to edi- 
torials on transient topics a permanent value and 
place them among the classics of literature. If 
they could be rescued from the oblivion that threat- 
ens them in the files of a newspaper, they would 
still breathe and glow with the deathless life of 
truth, and the quenchless fire of Christian enthu- 
siasm. 

The two questions already referred to, of Bible 
revision and the removal of the university from 
Hamilton, were so absorbing at this time and gave 
to such a degree its character to the paper that a 
brief account of their leading points is necessary to 
any record of Dr. Anderson's editorial work and 
influence. An outline of the facts is as follows : 
The American and Foreign Bible Society was or- 
ganized in 1837 by a large number of Baptists who 
had withdrawn from the American Bible Society. 



AS EDITOR IO5 

The occasion of this withdrawal was the refusal 
on the part of the American Bible Society to ap- 
propriate funds for the printing and circulating of 
the translations of the Scriptures made by the Bap- 
tist missionaries in India. This refusal was in part, 
at least, based on the fact that in these translations 
the word "baptizo" was translated " immerse," in- 
stead of transferred as " baptize." Whatever opinion 
might be held as to the wisdom of deviating from 
the Common English version in such translations, in 
order to express distinctive Baptist views, there 
could be but one consistent position, as it seemed 
to many, with regard to the printing and circulating 
of such translations, when conscientiously made. 
Hence, followed the division. 

In 1850, in May, at the annual meeting of the 
new society (the American and Foreign Bible So- 
ciety), the impulse toward re-translation given by 
the recent discussions of the subject, resulted in 
a resolution, recommended by a majority of the 
Board of Managers, " that the Society engage in 
the revision of the English Scriptures." ' This prop- 
osition did not commend itself to the majority of 
the Society, and a division of this Society followed. 
The withdrawing minority formed in June, 1850, 
the American Bible Union. The constitution of 
the "Union" defines its object to be u to procure 
and circulate the most faithful version of the word 
of God throughout the world." The Union went 
immediately forward with the work of revision, and 



106 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

made the first organized attempt since 1611 to 
apply sound scholarship to a translation of the 
original text for popular use. 

The undertaking was an enormous one, and much 
was justly to be said against the wisdom of enter- 
ing upon it at that time. A determined opposition 
to the movement arose. Greek met Greek, and 
Hebrew met Hebrew. Dr. Anderson joined and 
boldly championed the opposition. Through the 
press he fought hard. It would be unwise to go 
into the details of the contest, but the literature 
connected with it, consisting of editorials, communi- 
cations from the adherents of both sides, letters, 
and addresses, is intensely interesting, for the best 
talent of the denomination was divided, and there 
were able disputants on both sides. 

That this would be the case is evident when it is 
remembered that among the men who identified 
themselves with the revision movement was, to name 
but one, the profound biblical scholar and elegant 
writer, Rev. Thomas J. Conant, D. D., who was 
alike respected for his exact scholarship and beloved 
for his noble personality. With such opponents 
Dr. Anderson had foemen in some respects more 
than worthy of his steel. He had great admiration 
for some of the revisers, but with the movement 
toward revision he had no sympathy, and he un- 
sparingly condemned it. At the opening of the new 
Bible House in Philadelphia, in 1854, Dr. Anderson 
made the leading address, in which he took occasion 



AS EDITOR I07 

to review his position and to give his reasons for it. 
It was an eloquent and impassioned address. It 
called out from Dr. Conant a letter of defense, in 
his usual manner of classic, dignified composition. 

It was Dr. Anderson's weak point in the contro- 
versy that he seemed to underrate the really serious 
errors of the Common version. Most of the best 
scholarship of the time was against revision then. 
Its very importance made thoughtful men hesitate. 
There was but little real scholarship available for it. 
It was a work that, on the face of it, demanded the 
most thorough learning, and the united abilities and 
efforts of the whole denomination. To oppose it, 
however, on the ground of unimportance, or even of 
comparative unimportance, was an unfortunate posi- 
tion for a teacher and a professed classical scholar. 
He was inconsistent with his own high regard for 
sacred learning and its results as applied to just this 
department of scholastic progress. When the later 
revision was begun, Dr. Anderson entered into it 
with hearty sympathy. 

A second question of importance which helped 
to fill the columns of the " Recorder," and which 
had a large share of attention from the Baptist 
public during the years while Dr. Anderson had 
charge of the paper, was the removal of the uni- 
versity from Hamilton, N. Y., to Rochester, N. Y. 
The agitation on the subject of Bible revision was 
only a phase of a general awakening among Bap- 
tists in the direction of higher education. Brown, 



108 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Newton, and Madison had lighted their lamps a 
long time before, but their rays had been limited 
by an inadequate supply of oil, and had encountered 
also, even at that late day, an almost Cimmerian 
darkness. Some, on the one side, opposed the 
education of the laity ; others, the education of the 
clergy. It is difficult to realize now the extent and 
the character of the opposition, fifty years ago, to 
ministerial education. Even then there were those 
who regarded the call of God to indicate a condi- 
tion of passive receptivity instead of active effort. 
Study, in preparation for the work of the preacher, 
was regarded as a tacit insult to the Holy Spirit. 
Passages such as " Take no thought beforehand 
what ye shall speak," were construed into argu- 
ments, indeed into commands, against it. These 
superstitions were limited to the rural districts, but 
the interest in general education was slight, and 
the views regarding it were narrow. 

A movement was started in 1847 toward the 
removal of the institution from Hamilton to a more 
accessible location. The causes of this movement 
were numerous. No one reason could be assigned 
as the reason, and scarcely as the chief reason. 
There had been opposition to the admission of other 
than theological students, there had been a differ- 
ence of opinion in the Board as to the election of a 
professor, and other causes had been working to 
make some change seem desirable. The State was 
growing, and was growing westward. The existing 



AS EDITOR IO9 

location, beautiful as it was with nature's endow- 
ments (which were, indeed, the only liberal endow- 
ment of which the college could boast), was diffi- 
cult of access, and remote from the advantages of 
libraries, lectures, and of a wide circle of educated 
men and women. Among themselves the Faculty 
had choice society, but outside, as in any village, 
the appreciative circle was small. 

There were rare minds among the little group of 
professors, who with their wives and children, con- 
stituted the college society of Hamilton, forty-five 
years ago. A paragraph from the " Life and 
Letters of Dr. Raymond," compiled by one of his 
daughters, the late Mrs. Harlan P. Lloyd, gives a 
glimpse of the Hamilton days. The quotation is 
from a letter written by Mrs. Thomas J. Conant, 
herself one of the rarest of a circle of unusually 
intellectual women. She says : " How easy and 
free, how full of genuine heart-warmth, and of in- 
tellectual stimulus also, were those little gatherings. 
More good wit, atrociously successful puns, and 
.sparkling mots, were wasted in those bird-cages of 
parlors, on some of those genial evenings, than 
would have sufficed to spice a whole London season 
— comparing the chronicles of my memory with 
the recorded specimens of Sydney Smith and 
Douglas Jerrold." 

The first plan was to remove the institution 
bodily. The western part of the State was pre- 
ferred, and Rochester was selected as a city Offer- 
Is: 



IIO MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

ing marked advantages for the object in view. But 
the plan encountered opposition from the outset. 
Strong feeling was excited, and "Removal, for or 
against," shared with "Revision, for or against," 
the denominational attention. The removal was 
voted, however, and approved by a majority of the 
Board of trustees, and by a large convention of 
New York Baptists, assembled at Albany, in 1849. 
Legal difficulties arose, and the regents of the State 
of New York were applied to for a charter for a 
new institution. This was granted on condition 
that an endowment fund of one hundred and thirty 
thousand dollars should be raised within two years. 

When the question of removal had been settled 
in favor of division, the talking had to give place 
to working. It is unnecessary to enter into the 
details of the labor involved in starting such an 
enterprise. The men who saw the opportunity, 
seized it, made their plans, carried them out by 
raising money and interesting the public in them, 
were the founders of the University of Rochester. 
Dr. Anderson had from the first been in favor of 
the change, and, as will be seen, lent efficient aid 
through the columns of his paper. Upon Dr. Ray- 
mond was laid the burden of doing a large part of 
the work of soliciting money and bringing the sub- 
ject before the people. He was the professor of 
rhetoric at Hamilton, and was a man of marked 
gifts as a public speaker. 

A few quotations from Dr. Raymond's corres- 



AS EDITOR III 

pondence, in the biography referred to above, will 
illustrate the work done during the spring and sum- 
mer of 1850. 

Hamilton, Feb. 2, 1850. 

Dear Father : You have probably noticed in 
the papers that our application to the State Regents 
was successful. They have granted us their usual 
sealed instruments, pledging a charter for Rochester 
University, if one hundred and thirty thousand 
dollars of good subscription be obtained for endow- 
ing it within two years. Thus far the work of rais- 
ing the subscriptions has not gone on quite vigor- 
ously enough to suit us here, and the Faculty begin 
to talk of my going to spend a few weeks at the 
West. 

Rochester, July 26, 1850. 

. . . As the summer wanes, and with it the time 
for completing our subscriptions this fall grows 
shorter, our anxiety deepens, and our sense of 
pressing every moment and at every available 
point. We have added ten thousand dollars within 
ten days, and are now in sight of ninety thou- 
sand dollars. But I never realized how many 
a little it takes to make a mickle, nor how large a 
sum one hundred thousand dollars is. We are 
straining every nerve to reach that point before 
commencement at Hamilton, that we may feel war- 
ranted in announcing the opening of the university 
this fall, before the students disperse. 

Albany, August 30, 1850. 
To Mr. John N. Wilder : ... It was fortu- 
nate, on the whole, that I came this way, for things 
are very far from being well advanced here. Cut- 



112 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

ting and Lathrop are here from New York, both as 
clear as a bell on the right side. One important 
object I had in going on is to see more of Ander- 
son. I had a good deal of conversation with him 
at Saratoga, and his sympathies are with us. He 
is constantly getting a clearer notion of the state 
of things among us, and will come right as a 
trivet. 

A few sentences from Dr. Anderson himself 
shows his exact attitude toward the new college. 

Waterville, Maine, March, 1850. 
John N. Wilder, Esq. : You may be aware 
that I have, in company with another person, pur- 
chased the " New York Recorder." Since I re- 
turned to Maine, very much to my surprise, I have 
learned that the report has been spread abroad that 
Deacon Colgate is the real purchaser of the " Re- 
corder," and that my partner and myself are to be 
the echoes of his opinions on all subjects, and espe- 
cially on the university question. . . I have never 
had an opportunity of investigating the question in 
all its details, and consequently I do not now, nor 
have I ever made a full and decided statement of 
what would be my course of action when I come 
to take charge of the paper. . . It would be pre- 
sumptuous in me to judge the whole question be- 
fore I had learned all the facts by a personal exam- 
ination, but so far as I know my own mind, all my 
prejudices are in favor of your place. It would 
require an overwhelming amount of evidence to 
lead me with my present views to go against the 
enterprise at Rochester. . 



AS EDITOR 113 

In September, Dr. Raymond writes from Brook- 
lyn that the " ' Recorder ' is coming out decidedly 
in favor of Rochester, though not against Ham- 
ilton." 

In accordance with the hopes of those who had 
the success of the new institution at heart, the 
announcement of its opening in the coming autumn 
was made at commencement, at Madison Univer- 
sity, in the summer of 1850. On the first Mon- 
day in November, 1850, the organization was made 
at Rochester, the Faculty consisting of five pro- 
fessors from Hamilton : Thomas J. Conant, D. D., 
John S. Maginnis, D. D., John F. Richardson, 
John H. Raymond, LL. D., Albert H. Mixer, and 
Asahel C. Kendrick. Mr. E. Peshine Smith was 
instructor in mathematics. John N. Wilder was 
elected President of the Board of Trustees, and 
the Hon. Ira Harris, Chancellor of the Regents, 
was Chancellor of the College and presided at com- 
mencement. Dr. Kendrick acted as executive offi- 
cer. " The first catalogue reported eight instructors 
and seventy-one students, and in July, 185 1, it 
graduated its first class of ten." 

Under date of November 5, 1850, Dr. Raymond 
writes : 

. . . Well, the thing is done. The University 
of Rochester is no longer a thing of hope, a possi- 
bility, a promise, but a reality, substantial, visible, 
and alive. We open under cheering auspices, with 
more students than we had reason to expect. . . 



114 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

This afternoon we had a very interesting opening 
service in the chapel. A number of the leading 
citizens were in. Two of the clergymen, Presby- 
terian and Episcopalian, took part. JJie speech 
was made by President Wilder, and a capital speech 
it was. 

In the "Recorder," under date of July 9, 185 1, 
is a full report of the commencement exercises at 
Rochester that took place in that week. 

Dr. Anderson was present, and the quotations 
are from his own account, under the head of " Edi- 
torial Correspondence." 

Commencement — Wednesday Morning. 
Providence favored our friends with a most 
beautiful day for their first public demonstration. 
At an early hour the public rooms were thrown 
open, and large numbers of clergymen, citizens, 
and invited guests assembled to join the Trustees 
of the University and Theological School and the 
Chancellor and Faculty of Instruction, in a proces- 
sion to the Corinthian Hall, where the public exer- 
cises were held. The procession, which passed 
through Buffalo street and the Arcade to the Hall, 
was in the following order ■ 

Scott's Brass Band, 

Janitor of the University, 

Students of the Grammar School, 

Freshman Class, 

Sophomore Class, 

Junior Class, 



AS EDITOR 115 

Students of the Rochester Theological Seminary, 

Teachers of Select and Public Schools, 

Officers of the Athaeneum, 

Board of Education and Officers, 

Mayor, Common Council, and Officers, 

County and State Officers, 

Strangers and Invited Guests, 

Founders of the University, 

Clergymen and Editors, 

Judges of the Supreme and County Courts, 

Trustees of the Rochester Theological Seminary, 

Graduating Class and Candidates for Degrees, 

Faculty of the University, 

Board of Trustees of the University, 

Chancellor of the University, and President of the 

Board. 
Sheriff of the County. 

The Rochester " American " speaks of it as the 
" largest and finest civic procession " that had ever 
been seen in the streets of that city. The Oxford 
cap, surplice, and fine person of the Chancellor, 
formed a special point of attraction to the thou- 
sands who thronged the streets to see the proces- 
sion pass by. 

Taking all the exercises of the day together the 
impression made upon the friends of the univer- 
sity, and of the community generally, was in the 
highest degree satisfactory and pleasing. . . In 
looking over the history of the movement since the 
time that the subscription for the endowment was 
commenced, we cannot but see the hand of Divine 
Providence throughout. We have here a university 
respectably endowed, with a complete and able Fac- 



Il6 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

ulty, a class of tea just graduated, and with more 
students for the ministry on its list than any other 
Baptist college in the world. 

The report of the treasurer, as we understand, 
showed that the income from students and interest 
has been sufficient to meet the outlay for the year, 
preserving the fund of endowment without en- 
croachment. Should any appropriation be received 
from the State, it can be devoted to the enlarge- 
ment of the means of instruction. . . In finishing 
our account of the exercises, we should do injus- 
tice not to express the indebtedness of the friends 
of the institution to the indefatigable labors of the 
president and secretary of the Board of Trustees, 
John N. Wilder and William N. Sage, Esqs., together 
with the resident members of the Executive Board. 
Mr. Wilder has devoted almost his whole time and 
energies for more than three years to the great 
work of founding this university. His liberal con- 
tribution to the endowment has been among the 
least valuable of the services which he has ren- 
dered to the cause. 

In mentioning these gentlemen, we would not 
undervalue the equally zealous labors of our breth- 
ren, their coadjutors in thought and action. The 
friends of various denominations in Rochester, who, 
with commendable liberality, have given their 
influence and property to this enterprise, will have 
their reward in the delightful consciousness of hav- 
ing assisted to confer untold benefits on generations 
yet unborn. By the necessity of the case, the 
founders of this institution will be associated with 
its history in all coming time. Their memories 
will be cherished so long as good learning and the 



AS EDITOR 117 

Christian's faith shall conspire together for the 
glory of God and the good of mankind. 

. . . The Theological Seminary held its anniver- 
sary exercises on Thursday, the 10th, also in Corin- 
thian Hall. Notwithstanding the protracted liter- 
ary entertainments of the week, and contrary to 
general expectation, the assembly was hardly infe- 
rior in point of numbers to those which had pre- 
ceded, and came away certainly no less gratified 
with the performances. 

. . . The address to the (graduating) class by 
Dr. Maginnis, was admirable of its kind. Without 
any attempt at elaborate composition, it was the 
simple, earnest utterance of an affectionate teacher's 
feelings and counsels when bidding a last farewell 
to his pupils. The appropriateness of his admoni- 
tions and the pathos of his manner were felt not 
only by them, but by all who listened. 

But the gem of the occasion, and indeed of the 
entire week, was Dr. Conant's inaugural. His sub- 
ject was "The Claims of Sacred Learning," and a 
more finished, rich, and elegant production it has 
rarely been our fortune to hear. His object was to 
enforce and illustrate the value of sound instruction 
in the languages and literature of the Bible as an 
element, first, of ministerial, and secondly, of 
general intellectual education. We will not trust 
ourselves with any attempt at analyzing the argu- 
ment, or characterizing the exquisite illustrations of 
this masterly discourse. Suffice it to say, that it 
exhibited throughout the fruits of a ripe erudition 
in one of the highest departments of intellectual 
research, embodied in a style of classic elegance, 
and imbued with a spirit of pure and elevated 



Il8 MARTIN B. ANDKRSON 

enthusiasm, worthy alike of the man and his theme. 
It will doubtless be printed, and will be sought for 
and read by many who had not the privilege of 
hearing it. For ourselves, we feel proud that we 
have such a scholar for such a post, and are glad 
that he is placed in a position where his talents and 
acquirements may command the attention and 
exert the influence they so richly deserve. 

The chancellor's levee on Wednesday evening 
was a very pleasant affair. It was held in the uni- 
versity, all the rooms being thrown open for the 
occasion. . . As the invitation was general to all 
the friends of the university, the gathering was 
immense. . . The visitors were severally introduced 
to Chancellor Harris, who received them with char- 
acteristic urbanity and ease, and then distributed 
themselves over the edifice, as chance or inclination 
led. Some light refreshments were furnished in 
the course of the evening. Among those present 
we observed Hon. D. S. Dickinson, of the United 
States Senate, the mayor of the city, Chancellor 
Whittlesey, and other distinguished gentlemen from 
the vicinity. 

The second year was a very successful one, and 
the question of a president became important. 
Other additions to the Faculty were necessary. 
The death of Dr. Maginnis removed one of the 
most learned theologians of the denomination. His 
chair was filled by the election of Rev. E. G. Robin- 
son, D. D., LL. D., who was then pastor of Ninth 
Street Church in Cincinnati. He accepted the 
chair of theology, and brought an accession of 



AS EDITOR 119 

strength which told at once upon the theological 
department. The choice for president fell unani- 
mously upon the editor of the " Recorder." While 
his decision was pending, he writes to his friend, 
Dr. Robinson, as follows : 

My Dear Robinson : I am in much anxiety 
about the course I ought to take in reference to 
Rochester. I am younger in years and as a scholar 
than any one in the college department of the theo- 
logical school. I can carry there no reputation 
either as a preacher or a scholar, beyond that of 
any ordinary man of my age. Nearly all the men 
there are ripe scholars and men of character in the 
State, while I, poor dog, have no roots except these 
few that have shot out in the last three years. I am 
distressed at this aspect of the case. The Faculty 
have said everything that it was proper for them to 
say, but I know that I shall go, if I go at all, on a 
sort of probation. There is a great work to be done 
there. . . God help me. 

Yours truly, 

M. B. Anderson. 

He accepted the position, and was at his post in 
the autumn of 1853. A quotation from Dr. Ray- 
mond will give an idea of the existing conditions, 
and of the way in which the new president was re- 
ceived. He writes of the commencement of July, 
1853, as follows : 

Our commencement went off crackingly, the 
more so from there having been a general impres- 
sion among our friends that the institution had 



120 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

been suffering from the absence of Dr. Kendrick, 
the death of Dr. Maginnis, and our failure to get a 
president till the year was gone. In point of fact, 
we never made so good an appearance as now. A 
very large gathering of friends, from some of whom 
we expect liberal donations, encouraged us and gave 
a cheerful tone to the occasion. Next year we shall 
be much stronger in the faculty. Dr. Robinson, 
who succeeds Dr. Maginnis, is a man of clear, vig- 
orous intellect, and most finished style, and with 
our new president, Dr. Anderson, our corps will be 
at last complete. The doctor is a strong and able 
man, and certainly conservative enough, even for a 
college president, which is saying a good deal. We 
are heartily pleased with this last appointment. 

At this time Dr. Anderson was thirty-eight years 
of age. He was unusually mature in character, and 
his height and stalwart frame seemed to take the 
place of years and of experience in the added 
dignity they lent to his appearance. His wife and 
his father followed him soon to Rochester, and 
they set up their Penates in a pleasant house on 
the corner of North Street and Andrews. His 
sister Maria had died during their life in Williams- 
burg, just out of New York,, where they had re- 
sided while Dr. Anderson was editing the " Re- 
corder." It was in this year, 1853, that Waterville 
bestowed upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, 
an honorable mark of appreciation from the institu- 
tion with which as student and instructor he had 
been for so long a time connected. 



VII 
AT ROCHESTER 



If a University like this exists for any purpose, I suppose 
it is to promote mental culture, that is, the cultivation not 
merely of certain technical and professional faculties, but 
over and above these, of the whole man. The man, I 
must still hold, is more than his trade. — Principal Shairp. 



VII 

AT ROCHESTER. 1853-I87O 

IT is easy to assert that that which has taken 
place was to take place, to assume the role of 
prophet with a good strong backing of "accom- 
plished facts." It is unnecessary to say that the 
bright outlook became a real condition, and that 
hundreds of useful men to-day gladly testify to 
what the University of Rochester has done for 
them, since the beginnings recorded in the last 
chapter. It has already largely fulfilled " the prom- 
ise of its years." 

The new president at once made a good impres- 
sion upon the immediate friends of the college and 
upon the community at large, and his life was from 
that time so united with that of the university, 
that the record of it involves, as an essential part, 
the history of the college. Indeed, his life of neces- 
sity lacks salient points, such as it might have exhib- 
ited had his character been deficient in what made 
alike its personal strength and, in a high degree, its 
public importance, i. e., its quality of steadfastness. 
When he came to Rochester he took the college for 
the first object of his effort, and. although no one 
interest bounds the activities of an earnest man, 

123 



124 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

he made every other secondary to this one. He 
promulgated no new theories as a teacher or as an 
executive officer, but he set the seal of his person- 
ality on the whole. He did not, it is true, com- 
mand the unreserved co-operation of all the mem- 
bers of the Faculty. It was perhaps too much to 
expect that he would. His conception of the office 
of the executive of the university was not large. It 
was in some respects narrow, and was at the same 
time a little dictatorial. In a long letter to Mr. 
Matthew Vassar, with reference to his proposed 
college for women, he outlines this conception, and 
he makes the duty of the president to include a 
minute personal supervision of details which might 
better have been left to others. There were those 
who became restive under such a method of ad- 
ministration, and one or two changes took place in 
the Faculty after a year or two. But, as a whole, 
he was most highly esteemed, greatly admired, and 
warmly supported. 

Although his views regarding administration 
might, perhaps, have been broader, his conceptions 
of the character of an institution of learning, of 
its ends, its requirements, its responsibilities, were 
of the largest and most exalted. The following 
extract from his address to the graduating class of 
1874 speaks forcibly as to his ideas concerning the 
proper estimate of a college, and of its merited 
place in the interest and generous recognition of 
men. He says : 



AT ROCHESTER 1 25 

An institution of learning, by its consecration 
to so high an end, requires a combination in itself 
of all forms of human power. Intellect, scholar- 
ship, administrative capacity, unselfish devotion, 
force of will, untiring industry, all find a place 
among the " lively stones " of such a moral struc- 
ture. " It is my fixed opinion," says Sir Henry 
Maine, " that there is no surer, no easier, no cheaper 
road to immortality — such as can be obtained in 
this world — than that which lies through liberality 
expending itself in the formation of educational en- 
dowments. All experience shows that he only can 
command an enduring reputation who connects his 
name with the moral and intellectual history of 
man." If this generation shall fail to recognize our 
work we can wait. Nothing on earth except the 
church of God has such vitality as a solidly rooted 
university. Within the past five centuries dynas- 
ties, thrones, and States have passed away, and 
are almost forgotten. But the Universities of 
Bologna, Paris, Prague, Padua, Oxford, and Cam- 
bridge flourish as if endowed with immortal youth, 
and the memory of their founders shall live through 
all time. 

Dr. Anderson's formal inauguration occurred the 
January following his entrance upon his official 
duties. The subject of his address on that occa- 
sion was : " The Ends and Means of a Liberal Edu- 
cation." A current issue of the Rochester " Dem- 
ocrat and American," contains the following: 



Inauguration of President Anderson. — The in- 



126 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

augural address of Prof. M. B. Anderson, LL. D., 
President of the University of Rochester, was de- 
livered in Corinthian Hall on Tuesday afternoon. 
John N. Wilder, Esq., President of the Board of 
Trustees, presided on the occasion, and introduced 
President Anderson in a brief speech. 

He said that the occasion did not require that he 
should eulogize the character or capacity of the 
gentleman who had been elected to the important 
position of President of the University, or even an 
expression of confidence. The Board feel that he 
is eminently adapted to the position he has con- 
sented to occupy. The ceremony of inauguration 
will be simple, he said; but he thought that its ex- 
treme simplicitly would detract nothing, in the ap- 
preciation of this intelligent audience, from its in- 
terest. This institution is controlled and managed 
by people of simple tastes and habits. The great 
design of its founders and guardians is, that a sound, 
thorough, solid, substantial, and sensible education 
should be afforded to its students — that it should 
be eminently American. They had committed 
the management of its internal affairs to the hands 
of the gentleman whom he was about to introduce. 
They had done so with great confidence in his abil- 
ity and fitness, and with the understanding that the 
University is not to be the mere machine of secta- 
rian propagandism, but a high-toned, well-managed 
institution for high Christian education. This in- 
stitution has grown out of two great necessities — 
the first a local, and the second a denominational 
want. All familiar with its history know how those 
ends have been met. The enterprise was nobly sec- 
onded by the people of this city, where it was pro- 



AT ROCHESTER 127 

posed to locate it. And it might not be deemed 
egotistical in him, having had no previous oppor- 
tunity for doing so, to thank the citizens of Roches- 
ter for the unswerving and generous support which 
they had given to it. It was probably enough to 
say that the University was worthy of the city and 
the city of it. 

He then formally introduced President Anderson, 
who came forward and pronounced an address of 
considerable length, marked by learning, versatility, 
fine taste, and good common sense. 

The years 1854-55 passed quietly by. A letter 
speaks of the "monotonous routine " of the college 
life. In 1856 there was a decided increase in the 
number of students, and the Faculty and friends of 
the college felt much encouraged. The times that 
try men's souls begin when the tides of early enthu- 
siasm that have borne forward an enterprise have 
exhausted themselves, leaving the barrenness of 
indifference and forgetfulness in their retreat. The 
reaction from the exceptionally successful start was 
dreaded. It was with especial pleasure that the 
Faculty welcomed in 1856 a class of forty-seven 
freshmen, making the whole number of students in 
the college at that time one hundred and sixty- 
three. Then came the financial panic of 1857. 
The entering class of '58 numbered only twenty- 
eight ; but the number rose in '60 to forty-five. 

There was a new need for friends and money. 
The college had outgrown its first home, and a 



128 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

movement began, looking to the erection of a new 
building. The main responsibility and the most dis- 
agreeable part of the work inevitably fell upon the 
president. And if it had not fallen upon him he 
would have assumed it, for it was not easy for him 
to depute or to share responsibility. He had in 
this movement the warm support of the Faculty, 
and he was acting under the direction of the Board, 
but no one could act as his substitute. The Execu- 
tive Board had voted that an appropriation from the 
State treasury should be solicited, a course ap- 
proved and practised by all the colleges in the State. 
The sum asked for was twenty-five thousand dollars, 
and was to be supplemented by the same amount 
given by private citizens. He visited Albany in the 
interests of the bill, and a letter to his wife tells 
something of his emotions at the capital. 

Albany, April 3, 1856. 

My Dear Wife : I wrote you day before yester- 
day, but have as yet received no note from you. I 
have made up my mind that nothing is to be done 
for our appropriation bill now. As I said to you 
when I last wrote, nothing can be done here but by 
the action of a lobby member through an entire 
session. No politician can be trusted farther than 
he is watched and paid in some sort of current coin. 
You can hardly conceive the depth of political cor- 
ruption existing in this place. It is clearly second 
only to Washington in this respect. 

It is said that the old Roman augurs could not 
look each other in the face without smiling. It 



AT ROCHESTER 1 29 

seems hardly possible that these legislators can 
keep grave when they talk about public morals and 
public good while they all know that the only pre- 
vailing motive is private interest — that nobody 
thinks of a bill being passed on its own merits ; it 
must be bought or driven through the house or it 
never moves. A member will introduce a measure 
and seem to work for it, but there is always a clog ; 
something stops the wheels and somehow or other 
it does not go. Why ? The State pays for print- 
ing bills, but any given bill cannot get itself printed 
without some indirect process. Bills seem to be in 
regular order on the calendar, but somehow they 
never come up in their turn. I had written thus 
much when I was called to dinner, and all the cur- 
rent of my thought has been changed, and I cannot 
resume it, so you will get no more now of my Jere- 
miad concerning State legislation. I now think I 
will stop here till Monday and preach here. There 
are some things I may do by staying here perhaps 
a few days longer. I have never been in Albany 
for any time. I am anxious to hear from home. I 
want a letter of chit-chat and pleasant talk such as 
you write when you try. . . 

A letter addressed to the Hon. Lorenzo Burrows, 
Comptroller of the State of New York is in point 
here : 

Rochester, Dec. 10, 1857. 

Dear Sir : — I am too well acquainted with the 
principles which have guided your public career to 
suppose that any considerations apart from the 
public good would in the least affect you in giving 
preference to claims on the treasury. It is with 



130 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the view of recalling to your memory some consid- 
erations of a public nature affecting the validity of 
the claim of the University of Rochester on the 
State treasury, that, at the suggestion of your 
[word missing] I take the liberty of writing you. 
It is well-known to you that from the organization 
of our State government it has been the policy of 
New York to appropriate money in aid of public 
education. The State supports at a large expense 
a Normal school, and sets apart yearly funds to 
academies for the training of common-school teachers. 
Directly and indirectly we provide more trained 
teachers for common schools every year than the 
Normal school, supported at an expense to the State of 
twenty thousand dollars per year, if my memory serves 
me rightly. The Regents of the University exact- 
ing carefully prepared financial and literary reports 
from the colleges each year proceed on the assump- 
tion that they are responsible to the State for funds 
received from it. This division of supervising 
power over colleges between the State officers and 
their trustees is founded on the idea that education 
is, in part at least, a State burden. In point of fact 
the State has given largely to every college in the 
commonwealth, except our own, now in actual 
operation. To the older colleges, such as Hamilton, 
Union, and Columbia, it has given sums varying 
from one hundred thousand dollars to near a mil- 
lion. It is stated, on what I suppose to be compe- 
tent authority, that Union College has received 
rising seven hundred thousand dollars from the 
treasury. Columbia College received from the State 
property in New York city which is now immensely 
valuable. It is worthy of remark also that of these 



AT ROCHESTER 131 

large sums Western New York has received almost 
nothing. 

Again, while the colleges controlled by Presby- 
terians, Episcopalians, and others, have absorbed 
these large sums, the Baptists, with ninety odd 
thousand communicants, and six or seven times that 
number of those who sympathize with them, have 
received barely eight thousand five hundred dollars, 
which was given to the college at Hamilton. They 
have been taxed for the donations made to others, 
while they have been substantially excluded from 
the bounty of the State. The friends of this Uni- 
versity have raised more money from private sources 
than has been given to any other college in the 
State, and this in the short space of seven years. 
All these funds are brought by law under the con- 
trol of State regulations in the same manner as are 
those institutions in which the State has made large 
investments. Our University has accomplished 
more for public education in the seven years of its 
existence than any other college in the United 
States in the same length of time, dating from their 
organization. Regarding our standard of attain- 
ment and vigor of administration we shrink from 
comparison with no college in the State or the 
Union. With the moral and political tendencies of 
the instruction given here you are well acquainted. 
I trust they are such as will commend themselves 
to the favor of every Christian and patriot. The 
nature of the bill passed by the Legislature becomes 
in some sort a contract when the trustees comply 
with their part of the condition which the bill con- 
tains. They have met that condition and are most 
earnestly desirous that you can find it consistent 



132 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

with your sense of duty to pay over the appropria- 
tion due this year. I need not tell you that the 
result of this application will mark a turning point 
in the history of this University for good or evil. 
You have it in your power to become one of our 
most distinguished benefactors. Personally I am 
deeply interested in this decision of the question. 
The labor, anxiety, and thought required to pass 
the bill and raise the sum required by the State to 
make the appropriation available have fallen mainly 
on me. Deep, indeed, would be my chagrin if all 
should prove a failure. 

Very respectfully, 
Hon. L. Burrows. M. B. Anderson. 

As has been learned from the foregoing letter 
the obtaining of a corresponding sum from private 
citizens was a condition of the appropriation 
from the State. This was secured from gener- 
ous friends whose names appear a little later. 
The "begging" from friends was a little more dis- 
agreeable than from the impersonal collection of 
persons called " the State." Under Dr. Anderson's 
rugged surface was a very tender heart and a sen- 
sitive spirit. A friend who knew him well has said 
that he " was the easiest man in the world to snub." 
A cold reception chilled him to the marrow. He 
writes to his wife of a common friend, who came to 
make an evening visit at a house where he was 
staying, that "she greeted him with such singular 
coldness that he could scarcely force himself to 
speak a word through the evening." He is said to 



AT ROCHESTER 1 33 

have made at much inconvenience arrangements for 
a " begging trip " to New York ; to have planned 
his campaign minutely ; to have set out hopeful and 
in the best of spirits ; to have made his intended 
call ; and, either on account of a suspected coolness 
in his reception or of an unexpected obstacle or in- 
terruption, to have abruptly left the place, not hav- 
ing said a word of what it had been his intention to 
say. He had no brazen mask to assume in the face 
of objections or refusal, and the intensity of his de- 
sire for the accomplishment of his purpose made dis- 
appointment almost unbearable. 

The appropriation was made and the conditional 
fund was subscribed also. Some of the older of 
the "old boys" will remember with a touch of 
pathos the time of the building agitation. He 
invited their co-operation from the beginning. He 
told them that they must be on the lookout for a 
good site. One racy young man told the president 
one morning that he had found just the place for 
the new building. At a certain point in the Gene- 
see river were two small islands, connected with each 
other by a narrow strip of land and to the main- 
land by a bridge. " Put the building there and we 
will surely make Baptists of them, doctor. Put the 
college building on the outer island and the semi- 
nary nearest the land. Then when the students 
leave college they will be obliged to go through the 
seminary on one side, where they will perforce be- 
come thoroughly indoctrinated, or they will have to 

M 



134 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

go through the river on the other, where they will 
become thoroughly immersed." 

When the site was settled upon, — an account of 
which is given in Dr. Anderson's own report at the 
time of the dedication, — came the inevitable delays 
and disappointments. " We'll have it next year, 
and it will be a sincere building." "Next year " and 
"sincere building" became by-words. When its 
plain, brown-stone walls were up, and the stiff 
structure took the shape assigned to it, there were 
those who thought that it had been " wrought in a 
sad sincerity," and that it was as ugly as it was 
enduring. But even those who honestly regretted 
that more architectural taste had not been expended 
upon a building so noble in its purposes and so im- 
portant an addition to the public buildings of the 
city, and who had endeavored to bring about a 
change of plan, felt too deep a satisfaction in the 
possession of a building commodious and intrinsi- 
cally creditable to cavil or complain. On the 2 2d 
of November, 1861, amid fervent thanksgivings and 
warm hand-shakings, the new building was dedicated. 
Then the officers and students of the collegiate de- 
partment withdrew from the old hotel : 

He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
Built up its idle door, 

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no 
more. 

The foregoing quotation must not be applied with 



AT ROCHESTER 135 

the literalness that marks, or that seldom marks, 
the classical translator. The steps of the with- 
drawing tenants were not very soft, nor did they 
build up the door of the old building. The door 
was not "idle." To have built it up would have 
immured the theological department of the institu- 
tion, that continued to use the building until the 
erection of its own group of buildings on East 
Avenue ; the first of which was built by Mr. John 
B. Trevor, of New York City, in 1869, and the later 
ones by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, of New York. 
From the time of the completion of the new univer- 
sity building, the two departments of the institution 
were made distinct, the theological being under the 
charge of Dr. Robinson. 

The following account of the dedication of the new 
college building and of its receiving the name of 
"Anderson Hall," is taken from the account in the 
Rochester " Democrat and American" of current 
date. The newspaper from which extracts have 
been given is the same as the " Democrat and 
Chronicle " of to-day. 

" Dedicatory Exercises at the University of 

Rochester. 
" On Saturday afternoon the chapel of the new 
university buildings was dedicated with appropriate 
and very interesting exercises. There had been no 
formal dedication of the new buildings, which have 
for some time been occupied by the college, and the 



136 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

exercises at the chapel afforded the first and only 
opportunity to the friends of the institution to as- 
semble and take a glance together at the work that 
had been performed. 

" Cards of invitation were issued to such as were 
supposed to take an interest in the proceedings, and 
at the appointed hour the chapel was filled with 
people, and the exercises commenced. 

"Dr. Luckey made the opening prayer, in 
which the Divine blessing was invoked upon the 
institution, the country, and all the great interests 
that concern our people and the world. 

" President Anderson then requested the audience 
to sing the hymn commencing, ' Lord, I have made 
thy word my choice.' The reading of the nine- 
teenth Psalm, and a prayer by Rev. Mr. Boardman 
followed. 

"Dr. Anderson then read the following paper, 
which gives a history of the effort made to raise the 
fund for the university, and how the work was car- 
ried on to its completion : 

" It has been the settled policy of the trustees of 
this institution to keep its external and internal 
growth in harmony with each other. They have 
been anxious that its outward appointments should 
never be in advance of the ability, industry, expe- 
rience, and number of its instructors. They have 
wished to give a practical illustration of the fact too 
often forgotten, that large or elegant edifices do not 
make an efficient institution of learning. They 



AT ROCHESTER 1 37 

consequently opened this University in^a rented 
edifice. Soon after an opportunity presented itself 
of purchasing the building then occupied, and which 
for the past years of our history has been the Uni- 
versity's local habitation, and they accepted the 
reasonable terms upon which it was offered and 
effected a purchase. . . At the session of 1856, the 
trustees determined to commence an effort to erect 
a building on the grounds which they held on the 
east side of the city, eight acres of which had been 
given by the Hon. A. Boody, and the remainder 
acquired by purchase. During the next session of 
the Legislature, in January, the Executive Board in 
this city determined to apply to the State for an 
appropriation to assist in the erection of a building. 
After some consultation a bill appropriating twenty- 
five thousand dollars was drawn up, the appropria- 
tion being conditioned on the raising, from private 
sources among the friends of the University, of an 
additional sum equal to the amount named in the 
bill. This bill was offered in the Senate by Hon. 
John E. Patterson, then representing this district. 
Having been referred to the appropriate committee, 
it was considered and a favorable report made to 
the Senate. Through the efforts of its mover, Mr. 
Patterson, and those of Hon. William Kelly and 
Hon. A. S. Upham and other senators favorable to 
the measure, it was passed by a nearly unanimous 
vote. . . But the bill after all our pains was worth 
no more than a piece of blank paper until an equal 
sum had been subscribed by the private friends of 
the institution. . . Gratification at the success of 
our bill was followed by corresponding anxiety. 
This condition of our affairs was known to friends 



I38 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

of the University, and among others to General John 
F. Rathbone, of Albany. With a promptness and 
generosity which are a part of his nature, he came 
forward without being asked with an offer of a sub- 
scription of twenty-five thousand dollars to fulfill 
the conditions which were requisite to make our bill 
binding on the State Comptroller. None but those 
who knew the difficulties in which the University 
was placed can fully estimate what the institution 
owes to this act of enlightened liberality. The large 
donation of G. W. Burbank, Esq., of this city, which 
had been given to the endowment fund, had re- 
lieved the University in a similar strait a few years 
before. These are facts in our history which we 
recall and recognize with delight. 

" In retracing the efforts by which the bill was 
carried through the Legislature, we gladly recall and 
acknowledge the labors and influence of many 
among the living, and of one among the dead. 
The chief among the founders of the University, 
and the first president of its trustees, John N. 
Wilder, Esq., gave his constant and untiring labors 
for the success of the bill. Attention has been 
already called to those earnest friends who carried 
the bill through the Senate. To no one, however, 
is more due for the success of our efforts than to 
Hon. John T. Lacey, then member of Assembly 
for this city. He labored incessantly and with 
great judgment and tact for our object. Our diffi- 
culties were not yet ended. The State treasury 
was enormously overdrawn. Our canal revenues 
were at their lowest point. Piles of unpaid drafts 
were vexing the Comptroller, Hon. Lorenzo Bur- 
rows. In the course of the year, however, he 



AT ROCHESTER 1 39 

found means to pay the first instalment of our 
claim, $12,500. . . 

"By recognizing our claim as one of the just 
debts of the State, he placed himself among our 
substantial benefactors. The succeeding year the 
treasury passed into the control of Hon. Sanford E. 
Church. At the session of 1859 the trustees au- 
thorized the Executive Board in this city to proceed 
to the erection of this edifice. 

"In the plan and erection of the building the 
ideas of convenience, solidity, and economy have 
limited the action of the Board. The building is 
intended for use, not for show. So far as it was 
possible within these imperative limitations, the 
Board has desired architectural beauty. How far 
the architect has succeeded must be left to the gen- 
eral judgment of architectural critics. The Exec- 
utive Board was made a Building Committee by 
the trustees, with the addition of the president of 
the University and Prof. Quinby. Eor practical effi- 
ciency a sub-committee of three, consisting of the 
two last named with the addition of the secretary 
and treasurer, W. N. Sage, was appointed. 
Subsequently, on account of the absence of Prof. 
Quinby in the army and the partial illness of the 
president, the committee was enlarged by the addi- 
tion of Prof. Cutting and Dr. Henry Dean. Upon 
this sub-committee the principal labor of super- 
intendence has devolved. 

" In retracing in the barest outline the history of 
this building, from the first efforts to raise the 
money to erect it to the present time, there arise 
in the minds of those who have been most inti- 
mately connected with the efforts, emotions of 



140 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

mingled pain and pleasure — of pleasure and grati- 
tude to God for the result ; of pain at the very 
thought of the toil of brain and hand, of hopes de- 
ferred, of days and nights of depression, anxiety 
and exhausting care." 

" At the conclusion of the financial statement Mr. 
Sage stated that he had been requested by the 
Board of Trustees to offer a resolution which at a 
meeting held Nov. 22, 1861, was unanimously 
adopted : 

" Whereas, This new home of the University 
has been mainly obtained by the zeal, the labor, and 
the self-sacrificing spirit of its noble-hearted presi- 
dent ; therefore, 

"Resolved, That our secretary, William N. Sage, 
be authorized as our organ, and in our behalf, to 
make known at the dedication of the chapel the 
name of the new building, which will be known and 
designated hereafter as * Anderson Hall.' 

" The announcement by Mr. Sage of the resolu- 
tion of the trustees conferring such a marked com- 
pliment upon the president, evidently took the gen- 
tleman by surprise. His heart was touched by 
this delicate expression of confidence and esteem, 
and he could not conceal his emotion. 

" Dr. Kendrick then delivered the address, and 
after the address and a prayer, which was offered by 
Dr. Shaw, the audience received the benediction 
from Dr. Dewey." 



AT ROCHESTER 141 

The following musical stanzas by Joseph O'Con- 
nor, of '63, suggest the contrast between the old and 
new college homes, and will recall to the alumni, 
with the vividness of a picture, the real and the 
ideal outlook of their college days. That it is what 
" one of your own poets hath said," will enhance its 

interest : 

ANDERSON HALL. 

No more within an old Hotel, 

Amid the city's noises, 
We strain our lungs in vain to quell 

Its clamors with our voices. 
No more do hens in torture shriek 

Through problems mathematic, 
No more, three stories up, our Greek 

Seems purest kind of Attic. 

Here all is calm, and cool, and strong, 

And each sedate Professor 
May sit and talk, the robin' s song 

Alone is an aggressor, 
Save when some engine rushes by, 

And like a brazen giant 
Sends forth its shrill and startling cry, 

Loud, warning, and defiant. 

Here lazy boys, when Latin tires, 

May sit in luscious dreaming, 
And watch the tall, suggestive spires 

That rise in sunlight gleaming. 
Or when, upon the other side, 

Dull Logic seems unending, 
May turn to meadows stretching wide, 

And woods to breezes bending. 



142 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Ah, yes, so soft the scene, and bland, 

Around our Seat of Learning, 
We oft forget how in the land 

The flames of War are burning ! 
Yet in each heart the slightest spark 

Lights dread or expectation, 
Each bosom's swell may serve to mark 

The pantings of the Nation ! 

The Civil War had begun. Dr. Anderson had 
predicted it while others were uncertain and hopeful 
of a different issue. When Sumter was fired upon, 
the swift current of patriotism thrilled through Fac- 
ulty and students. Dr. Anderson was a Republi- 
can in political affiliation, but he was first a patriot. 
In a memorial article that appeared immediately 
after his death, in the Rochester "Post-Express," 
the editor, Mr. O'Connor, says : 

Before the Civil War he was a conservative, and 
if he did not believe that the conflict between the 
North and the South could be put off altogether, he 
wrought for its postponement. . . Lie foresaw and 
foretold the crisis of 1861, not vaguely, but defi- 
nitely and distinctly, and when it came, he was not 
taken by surprise, but stood ready to meet the re- 
sponsibilities which it brought. When fire was 
opened on Fort Sumter a meeting was called at the 
city hall and the anxious people gathered in throngs. 
The petty politicians who had laughed at the idea of 
Civil War sneaked into the background ; but the wise 
and bold scholar was prompt to meet the emergency. 

Dr. Anderson was the chief speaker at the meet- 



AT ROCHESTER 1 43 

ing, and no one that heard him can ever forget the 
occasion. At the first flash of gunpowder the con- 
servative was transformed into a radical, and he 
welcomed the contest with a frank, fierce enthusiasm. 
It is the opinion of one who was long the associate 
of Dr. Anderson that his greatest speech was made 
in denunciation of the assault on Charles Sumner 
in the Senate ; but so far as our memory goes back, 
he was grandest in his acceptance on behalf of a 
peaceful people of the Southern defiance to battle. 
. . Seldom have nobler words on a nobler occasion 
been more nobly spoken. 

His patriotic utterances were as sincere as they 
were eloquent. He writes. that " it would have been 
a positive relief to him if he could have gone him- 
self like Quinby into the work of raising a regi- 
ment." In the same letter, addressed to Hon. Ira 
Harris, he says, under date of Rochester, April 21, 
1 86 1 : "I have been terribly anxious about Wash- 
ington for a week or more past. I have turned 
myself into a professional agitator during that time, 
— in the pulpit, on the platform, in the street, 
wherever I could get anybody's ear. I have in the 
meantime held council with Quinby and Martindale, 
visited the recruiting stations and the Common 
Council, doing everywhere what I could. . . Quin- 
by' s regiment is nearly ready. They are mustering 
men in this afternoon. It is a terrible blunder in 
the law or the general order, I don't know which, 
that the officers cannot be commissioned and the 
men sworn in here. In fact, Rochester ought to 



144 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

be made into a military depot, so that the men can 
be disciplined for a few days before they are put 
under marching orders. I trust you will see there 
is no hitch about Quinby's commission as colonel. 
He is morbidly modest and I encouraged him in 
going on without orders or commission, tell- 
ing him that you and I, and all the force at our 
command would insure him against the disgrace of 
failure. He is very anxious to get 'William' or 
some similar person for an adjutant. With these raw 
men he needs very much an experienced staff. I 
am very much troubled to keep the students from 
enlisting. They will go to a man if needed. . . 
My mind is full of crotchets. I want the govern- 
ment to call for a volunteer navy to serve during 
the war on the army plan. I would take officers 
for this navy, part from the regular service, and 
part from the merchant marine, from the best sea- 
men among the masters and mates. I would buy 
or charter a number of light-draught propellers and 
some side-wheel steamers, strengthening them by 
some thick streaks and knees, so that they would 
bear a battery of two heavy pivot guns, a few more 
smaller pieces for grape at close quarters, and send 
them out as coast-guards, transports, and sea-guer- 
illas, to scour the Southern coast, pick up priva- 
teers, dash into small ports, make little boat expedi- 
tions beating up the enemy's quarters everywhere, 
keeping them in constant fear, and compelling them 
to keep men under arms all along the coast of the 



AT ROCHESTER 1 45 

Southern States. Being kept under articles of war 
they would not be objected to by other nations. 
They would be of most efficient assistance in keeping 
up the strictness of the blockade, and keeping off 
provisions and contraband articles of war from the 
enemy's coast. Naval volunteers of this sort could 
be used to the end of the war and then discharged 
without incurring further expense." . . 

This is a short extract from a long letter full of 
suggestion, even as to the course best to be pursued 
by a division of the army in southern Kansas. 

The loss of Prof. Isaac F. Quinby was a severe 
one to the college. He was a trained and brave 
soldier, but he was no less brilliantly endowed as a 
teacher of mathematics. He raised the first two 
years' regiment in the State of New York, and 
served until the close of the war. 

Although Dr. Anderson restrained many of the 
students from a hasty plunge into the volunteer 
army, he was heartily desirous that all should enlist 
whose circumstances justified it, if the country 
needed their services. The students who were in 
college at that time will not forget it — the stirring 
talks from the president on their duty as citizens, 
the solemnity that pervaded the religious exercises, 
the invohmtary bursts of emotion in public and 
private, the suspense in which the daily routine 
went on. No succeeding classes, however well 
drilled in the science of government, and of our 

N 



146 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

government, have learned so well the principles on 
which that government was founded. A large pro- 
portion of students early enlisted. Twenty men 
from the under-classmen were reinforced by twenty- 
five from the senior class and the alumni — a propor- 
tion of one in eight of the whole number of stu- 
dents. A memorial tablet in the chapel of Ander- 
son Hall commemorates the ten who died in the 
service. To the president all the students were as 
sons, but toward those who lost their lives in the 
war he felt a peculiar tenderness as though they 
had been doubly his own. He could never speak or 
hear of them without tears. 

It is a common thing to jest at the practical 
patriotism and political wisdom of a scholar. There 
is no more baseless jest. It was really during the 
war and because of it that an intimate relation grew 
up between the college and the city, much stronger 
than the social relations that had before existed. 
Rochester passed through the same soul-stirring 
scenes as other cities, and not a citizen was more 
eager to lend a hand than each member of the col- 
lege Faculty. The president, especially, by virtue 
of peculiar gifts, became a leader in every civic or 
military meeting which it was possible for him to 
attend. More than once on these occasions he 
thundered like a "Jupiter Tonans." His massive 
form and head, his ringing voice, his swiftly surging 
flow of thought and speech, have brought to mind 
the cry, " The gods have come down to us in the 







JEREMIAH CJMEU 

Class of IS 52. Lg. 

SIMEYERlCMRDSol 

Class of IS S3. 

WILLIAM E BRISTOL 

Class of 1656. 

THEODORE E. BAKER. 

Class of 1857 

SYIAAMJS S WILCOX. 

Class of 1860. 




juries isms 

: Class of 1861 R 

JOSEPH WEBSTER 

Class of 1861 

WILLIAM C.HALL. 

Class of 1865. 

WILLIAM E OR R. 

Class of 1864 

J. HARRY POOL. 

Class of 1865. 



>t 



■""■B PS» 



THE MEMORIAL TABLET. 



p. 146. 



AT ROCHESTER . 1 47 

likeness of men." His citizenship was cemented 
by this crisis as has been seldom true of a college 
president. 

During the war and after it, till age and illness 
forced him to withdraw from public scenes, it is 
scarcely too much to say that no public meeting 
was complete without him — his voice, or, after that 
became too much to ask, his presence. It is a little 
the fashion of late to question, or even deny the 
efficient mutual relations of the university and the 
city. This misrepresents the facts. During the 
entire life of the college the relations between the 
city and the university have been close. The rapid 
influx of a new population overshadows for a time old 
ties formed while the city was younger. But her 
graduates are among its men of prominence and cul- 
ture, and the intelligent society for which Rochester is 
noted, is due largely to her presence and influence. 
To no man does Rochester owe more for enlightened 
and able leadership than to Dr. Anderson, and to 
him at no period of his life was its indebtedness as 
great as during the war. It was a remarkable and 
spontaneous tribute to his civic importance that 
after his death it was seriously debated whether his 
most appropriate position, carved in marble, would 
be upon the college campus or in front of the 
Court-house. 

Numerous and long letters written in war time to 
prominent political men ; written in the midst of 
the anxieties attendant upon dwindling college 



148 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

classes and proportionately increasing financial em- 
barrassments, attest the grip which the principles 
and the practice of patriotism had upon him. Sit- 
ting in his library or class-room he improves our 
vessels of war, plans campaigns all over the country, 
and watches the public pulse both at home and 
abroad. He was well adapted to the strategic, the 
mechanical, or the fighting department of war-mak- 
ing ; and, while it cannot be said of him that a good 
soldier was spoiled in a poor college president, those 
who best knew his dominating characteristics have 
been often inclined to think that his natural and 
most congenial post would have been at the head of 
an army. 

The war told heavily upon the prosperity of the 
college. At the close of 1 862 Dr. Anderson found 
himself worn in body and mind. The labors in- 
cident to carrying through the building project, the 
excitements connected with the war, and the ap- 
prehensions for the future of the college had 
affected his health. At the close of 1862 he bor- 
rowed money, and he, with Mrs. Anderson, went to 
Europe for a year of rest. There they lived and 
traveled quietly, avoiding publicity, but they re- 
ceived many pleasant attentions. Although he 
purposely avoided public speaking, he " did much 
quietly to put the Northern cause into its true light 
before Southern sympathizers." 

One amusing incident occurred at one of the 
Italian cities. His resemblance to Garibaldi had 



AT ROCHESTER 149 

often been remarked, but his astonishment can be 
imagined at finding, on one occasion, his hotel filled 
and his carriage surrounded by a crowd that had 
taken him for the Italian. Among other results of 
this European tour, and one of the most valuable, 
was a choice collection of engravings and etchings. 
This collection was made with especial reference to 
its use in the weekly lectures on art which had be- 
come a feature of the college course and of the 
aesthetic life of the city. Dr. Anderson had a fine 
artistic taste, and a very extensive and thorough ac- 
quaintance with the history and principles of art. 
If he had been a man of wealth he would have 
been a generous patron of the best artists in their 
varied departments. A short extract from a letter 
to a friend in the Faculty, and who was acting-presi- 
dent during his absence, illustrates the general 
character of their tour. 

Milan, June 1, 1863. 
My Dear Friend : — I had intended to answer 
your letter from Florence, but I was prevented by 
those little events that so consume the scanty leis- 
ure of tourists. Mrs. Anderson wrote to Mrs. 
Gardiner (the mother of Mrs. General Quinby) of 
our tour from Rome to Florence. We went by 
Assisi, Cortona, Perugia, and Arezzo, through the 
heart of old Etruria, directly across the old battle- 
field of Lake Thrasymene. We visited every place 
of interest along the route, spending six days in our 
trip. The Etruscan sites on the road you are 
familiar with. Apart from the headwaters of the 



150 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Clitumnus, the Necropolis of Capua (just opened), 
the old deserted walls of Falerii, the Bridge of 
Augustus over the Velino, the site of Fidenae (the 
battle-field between Constantine and Maxentius), 
were most interesting. After I reached Florence 
I made an excursion with a scholarly friend to the 
old city of Clusium, the seat of Lars Porsena, where 
" by the nine gods he swore," and the visit was one 
of exceeding interest. While there we made ex- 
cursions to Sarteano and Cetona, also Etruscan 
sites. I won't give a new edition of Meditations 
among the tombs, hoping to be alive, by God's bless- 
ing, to give my sepulchral experiences to the " old 
Club." 

On our return we paid a visit to Sienna and her 
old masters in painting and architecture, and were 
richly repaid for our trouble. The wealth of early 
art in these old republican towns in sculpture and 
painting is really wonderful. I saw there a 
Madonna by Guido of Sienna, which was signed 
and dated 1221. It was hardly inferior to Giotto, 
and fully equal to Cimabue, one of whose Madonnas 
was near. Simone Memmi, Taddeo Gaddi, and in 
later times, Sodoma and Beccafumi were worthy of 
the best companionship of the Roman and Floren- 
tine schools. Between Sienna and Florence we 
passed close to the birthplace and favorite resi- 
dence of Boccaccio. At Perugia we saw some of 
the early works of Raphael while he was a pupil 
under Perugino. 

In the Sala del Cambio at Perugia are two series 
of finely preserved frescoes of Perugino, on which 
Raphael worked — some sibyls are undoubtedly his 
work. They are clearly the originals of his later 



AT ROCHESTER 151 

sibyls in the Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. 
Perugino is here at 'his best — the worthy master of 
Raphael. At Assisi in the great and, I may say, 
wonderful church of St. Francis we saw Cimabue 
and Giotto in their glory. Nearly the whole roof 
of the nave is covered with frescoes of Cimabue. 
The sides of the nave lower down are covered by 
the works of Giotto. In the lower church are 
Giotto's masterpieces over the high altar. 

I will pass over Florence and leap the Apennines 
to Bologna. We went thither by land over the 
mountains. We were most amply satisfied of the 
justice of the praise given to the Bolognese school. 
Domenichino, Guido, and Guercino here appear to 
the highest advantage. Other names of men 
hardly known are their worthy competitors. At 
Florence we saw the works of Garofolo and Dosso 
Dossi, who give dignity to the old decayed town of 
Ariosto's residence and Tasso's imprisonment. 
Everywhere we feel impressed with the idea that 
the very few names which stand out apart in the 
history of Italian art are natural outgrowths of an 
atmosphere and soil, and that a mere trifle more 
favorable circumstance and conscientious labor gave 
to Raphael, and Titian, and Corregio the supremacy 
which they held. I am more and more satisfied 
that in general those who pass for prodigies of 
genius are but a very little above the average of 
first-rate men of their time in natural gifts, and are 
those whose health, career, or industry gave them 
a very little supremacy over their fellows. When 
this was conceded by their own and succeeding ages, 
the tendency has been to reduce the value of 
these able contemporaries and exalt those who were 



152 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

a very little the abler men. Now, in saying this, 
I do not wish to deny the reality of the world's 
judgment regarding special and God-given genius. 
I see no one " simile aut secundus " to Raphael, or 
Michael Angelo, or Titian. But I am sure that 
Michael Angelo could not have been without Ghi- 
berti, Giotto, and Massacio. ... I see all the 
elements of Titian's unrivalled power over the hues 
of nature in Gian. Bellini. I am sure also that 
Italian art cannot be intelligently studied except in 
its history. 

I have given nearly as much time to Giotto, Peru- 
gino, Bellini, and Fra Angelico as to their greater 
and more fortunate successors. I have wished cog- 
nosces cansas — to look at Italian art, not as an un- 
accountable phenomenon, but as natural growth 
from real forces in the times. You will say, " Here 
is my old friend astride his hobby — historical devel- 
opment," but I know that you are large enough to 
admit even a hobby into your thoughts. . . I 
feel the necessity of discharging from my mind so 
far as possible all anxiety regarding home matters. 
My weakness and ill-health when I left home were 
due to excessive anxiety about the success of the 
University in times of peril, rather than to work. 
I have a foolish habit of suffering by anticipation. 
A present danger or calamity I never fear greatly. 
It is generally something tangible that I can fight 
with. I often anticipate as if actually present ca- 
lamities that never come to pass. In this way I 
have taken more trouble upon me than was needful. 
This anxiety regarding the future has saved me 
from many difficulties — made me vigilant and held 
me sharply up to my duties when indolence or 



AT ROCHESTER 1 53 

weariness would have counselled rest, but it has 
helped to reduce my physical strength, and I must 
try, even at this late day, to reform and live less in 
the future and more in the present. 

I am conscientiously taking every means to re- 
cover strength for future work in the University. 
Sometimes I do not look at a newspaper for two 
weeks. I can do nothing for the University or my 
country but in prayer, and so I do not attempt any- 
thing except to defend it when attacked. When I 
went abroad I deliberately determined that neither 
man nor woman should decry my country in my 
presence without rebuke. I have found less occa- 
sion for defense of our institutions than I expected. 
I have avoided society, and few seem disposed to 
abuse. Ignorance is the great difficulty. I find 
among Englishmen an ignorance of our institutions 
worthy of a Comanche Indian. The war inter- 
feres with trade everywhere. . . We don't spend 
money as formerly, and hence are all in the wrong. 
They hope we shall soon be whipped into peace, as 
that will bring them trade again. This is the whole 
story regarding the opinions of the mass of Euro- 
peans as to America. The English have in addi- 
tion the same sort of pleasure in our trouble that 
they would in seeing a stiff rebellion in France 
which should cripple the power of Napoleon, so 
that they should be delivered from the French 
nightmare which so rides them. 

I am delighted to hear of the moral state of the 
University. God be with you and strengthen you 
all. Remember me to all. I shall write soon re- 
garding the future. Yours sincerely, 

M. B. Anderson. 



154 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

The preceding extract gives a good idea of the 
breadth of Dr. Anderson's views as to art, and the 
insight and independence displayed in his com- 
ments. In no branch of study were his historical 
and philosophical methods more useful than in 
his art instruction. His series of art lectures 
was delivered on Saturday mornings in the chapel 
of the college, and a large number of persons 
attended them from the city. Architecture he 
was especially interested in, and his casual remarks 
on that subject were very suggestive. He was for 
several years one of the commissioners appointed 
to superintend the laying out of public parks in the 
city, and was very much interested in that aspect 
of the development of Rochester. 

Upon his return from Europe he resumed his 
regular duties at the university. These were greatly 
increased in some directions by the effects of the 
war in reducing the number of young men who 
were able to take a college education. It has been 
estimated that not until two years ago has the 
country returned to her ante-bellum status in that 
respect, and that the large influx of young men 
into college during the last two years marks the re- 
turn to the due proportion of young men in the 
country, and consequently in the colleges. In 1 864 
the number of students who entered was only nine- 
teen, and in 1866 the whole number in attendance 
was but one hundred. 

With college attendance at this low ebb some- 



AT ROCHESTER 155 

thing had to be done. Hard times knocked at the 
door, and bankruptcy peered in at the window. 
Dr. Anderson spent a great deal of time in solicit- 
ing money, and his letters to his wife reveal a terri- 
ble despondency and apprehension. He says that 
unless he can get money he must resign. In this 
time of depression he was shown the " kingdoms of 
this world and the glory of them." Brown Uni- 
versity called him to fill the place of Dr. Barnas 
Sears, resigned. On the 17th of April, 1867, he 
was unanimously elected President of Brown. 
Every Baptist will at once recognize the honor of 
the appointment and the inducements for its ac- 
ceptance. Brown was old, well endowed, of high 
rank among educational institutions. An editorial 
of current date in a religious newspaper says : 

" In point of honor it (the presidency of Brown) 
is the first place the denomination can bestow upon 
any man. The college is more than a hundred 
years old ; has graduated the first men in the 
land or world ; has numerous warm-hearted friends 
who will watch over it with paternal solicitude ; a 
large and increasing patronage ; and has before it 
the promise of a splendid career of usefulness. Its 
presidents have been men worthy of any position as 
men of talent, scholars of large attainments, and 
educators of the highest views and the best disci- 
pline." 

The correspondence addressed to Dr. Anderson 
on this subject was large and suggestive. Each 



I56 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

writer had his opinion and his "cause," and 
"advised," "hoped," "urged," "entreated," and 
"prayed " on his side the more ardently, because 
some other was doing the same on his side. For- 
tunately, their target was a man of opinions of his 
own, and was not likely to be distracted in judg- 
ment or diverted in action by so many and so diver- 
gent counsellors. 

When Rochester woke up to a knowledge of the 
external and internal pressure that was making it 
very difficult for Dr. Anderson to decline the elec- 
tion, a meeting was called to consider the subject. 
Mr. William A. Reynolds, one of Rochester's 
most liberal and high-minded citizens, presided 
at this meeting. Professor Cutting, who had 
been elected professor of rhetoric several years 
earlier, made with fine tact the opening state- 
ments, explaining the difficulties which were har- 
assing the president, reminding the citizens of 
certain more or less definite but very important 
promises which had at different times been made 
with reference to the college, and which had been 
neglected, if not entirely forgotten. Then he 
called upon the treasurer, Mr. William N. Sage, 
for a financial report. The sum demanded by 
the exigencies of the college was two hundred 
thousand dollars. What would Rochester do ? 
Several distinguished citizens, Dr. E. E. M. Moore, 
the present honored president of the Board of Trus- 
tees, the late Hon. Lewis H. Morgan, Judge 



AT ROCHESTER 157 

George H. Danforth, Judge E. Darwin Smith, and 
others, made complimentary addresses. Dr. Ken- 
drick gave a brief exposition of the character and 
services of Dr. Anderson. The practical result of 
the meeting was embodied in a resolution that the 
sentiment of the meeting be expressed to Dr. 
Anderson, and that the sum of thirty thousand dol- 
lars be raised in Rochester to provide a president's 
house and a laboratory for the university. The 
following brief document contains what was in 
some aspects a " grand refusal." 

Rochester, June 7, 1867. 

Gentlemen : After anxious and protracted de- 
liberation I have decided to decline the office ten- 
dered to me by the Fellows and Trustees of Brown 
University. 

It would be impertinent in me to recount the 
reasons which led me to this result. I have sought 
to decide the question in full view of the conse- 
quences, both personal and public, which are 
involved in it. I must leave the event with God. 

I beg you to convey to the distinguished bodies 
of gentlemen whom you and your colleagues repre- 
sent, the profound sense of obligation which I 
entertain toward those who have honored me with 
their suffrages. Could I have seen it to be con- 
sistent with the considerations of honor and duty 
which bind me to my present position, nothing 
would have given me greater gratification than to 
serve them, and, so far as I am able, by earnestness 
and diligence to vindicate their too favorable judg- 
ment of my labors on behalf of Christian education. 

o 



I58 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

My sincere prayer is that they may be guided in 
their future action by Divine wisdom. I am, gen- 
tlemen, 

Your obedient servant, 

M. B. Anderson. 
To the Committee of Fellows and Trustees — 
Rev. Dr. Stow. 

Dr. Anderson's less formal statement was some- 
what like this : " Go ? No, I am going to stand 
by. Rochester invested in me when I was un- 
known and without value ; if the investment has 
not proved a failure, Rochester deserves the 
profits." 

In compliance with the resolution mentioned 
above, a desirable and beautiful property near the 
college was purchased, and was given to the univer- 
sity for the residence of the president. The house 
standing upon it was not new, but was spacious and 
attractive. It was situated on the corner of Uni- 
versity Avenue and Prince Street. From that 
time until the resignation of the president, in 1888, 
that house was the scene and center of a hospital- 
ity as hearty as it was generous and elegant. 

In 1868, Dr. Anderson was appointed a member 
of the State Board of Charities from the seventh 
judicial district of the State. The work involved 
in the acceptance of this office and in the faithful 
discharge of its duties was exacting, and extremely 
wearing in its nature. He was untiring in his 
investigations whether of existing conditions, his- 



AT ROCHESTER 1 59 

torical facts, or scientific statistics. His reports 
include minute examinations of a great variety of 
subjects, such as " Labor in Institutions for the 
Dependent Classes," "The Education of Deaf 
Mutes," "Alien Paupers," "Outdoor Relief," "The 
Condition of the Asylum for the Blind at Batavia," 
and many others. An especially important paper, 
read before the Social Science Congress at Sara- 
toga, in 1876, was on the "Means of Relief from 
the Burden of Foreign Paupers." 

This is not the place for an outline even, of his 
opinions on subjects of this character. Extracts 
from such reports, and indeed, the reports them- 
selves, do not give, except to those who have had 
experience in compiling them, anything like an 
adequate idea of the work involved in their prepa- 
ration. Practical and constructive rather than 
theoretic and analytic, his mind readily grasped, 
combined, and applied the elements of social eco- 
nomic problems. His services on this Board, and on 
numerous important occasions that grew out of it, 
were highly esteemed. They brought to him one 
of the most gratifying honors of his life — election, in 
1872, to membership in the Cobden Club, of Eng- 
land. He resigned from this Board in 1872, and 
was worthily succeeded by the late Hon. Oscar F. 
Craig, of Rochester, whose name suggests to the 
persons so fortunate as to have been in any way 
associated with him, integrity and fidelity, adjoined 
to unusual ability. 



l6o MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Other marks of appreciation of Dr. Anderson's 
public services came to him, such as an appoint- 
ment on the commission to preserve a public park 
at Niagara, and also on an important commission, 
appointed by the executive of the State, " to con- 
sider the better government of cities." And so the 
years brought not only labors but honors, and the 
consciousness that the former were not in vain. 



VIII 
AT ROCHESTER— TO 1882 



Again and again have I said that I know not what to 
do with a metaphysical God ; and that I will have no other 
God but the God of the Bible, who is heart to heart. — 
Niebuhr. 



VIII 

AT ROCHESTER TO 1 882 

DURING the thirty years — from 1840 to 1870 — 
of Dr. Anderson's working life, he had been 
constantly expending mental force, in addition to 
his regular work of instruction, in correspondence, 
in sermons, and in addresses, but he had em- 
bodied almost nothing in a form which could be 
regarded as in any degree permanent. Between 
1865 and 1880 he prepared and printed several 
series of lectures ; some of these were prepared for 
and delivered before his own classes, others were 
delivered before institutions similar to his own, and 
others before institutions quite different in charac- 
ter — bodies of professional specialists in science, 
law, or politics. His department of instruction was 
metaphysics and psychology. His first complete 
series of lectures was upon psychology, and was 
prefaced by a careful and somewhat elaborate dis- 
cussion of scientific method. In this discussion 
he sets forth " the principles underlying the origin 
and organization of the various departments of purely 
scientific investigation " ; but he also claims and illus- 
trates "the possibility of subjecting mental phe- 
nomena to scientific analysis and interpretation." 

16.1 



164 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

He gives the following definition of science : 
" Science is the discovery, classification, and naming 
of uniform and invariable relations of action and 
reaction, quality and quantity, form and substance 
among the forces and existences which make up 
the world of matter and of mind." After illustrat- 
ing his theory of the proper method to be applied 
to the investigation of mental phenomena, he takes 
up these phenomena and endeavors to ascertain and 
classify the laws that control mental action. 

" As a philosopher he was a natural realist. He 
follows Sir William Hamilton and the Scottish 
school, which emphasizes the doctrine of common 
sense, in opposition to the idealism of Berkeley and 
Hume." 

Between Materialism and Idealism he occupies a 
middle ground. He says : "Whoever attends to 
the conditions of his own intellectual life, with these 
two forms of existence (mind and matter) always pres- 
ent and always asserting their distinctness and dif- 
ference, can never accept either Idealism or Materi- 
alism. The formula of consciousness constantly 
repeats the affirmation of that grand duality that 
pervades the universe." 

These lectures contain condensed outlines of lead- 
ing theories in psychology, which precede a careful, 
masterly statement of his own position. He made 
no claim to originality of system or of presentation, 
nor can it be claimed for him. The leading charac- 
teristics of his metaphysical thought and teaching 



AT ROCHESTER 165 

were soundness, independence, and clearness. He 
had no mental vagaries nor intellectual dark cor- 
ners. Nor did he follow any thinker except from 
honest conviction. He read widely and thought 
carefully. His mind had a certain native integrity 
that rendered him a peculiarly safe leader in the 
realms of metaphysical speculation. These lec- 
tures were supplemented by a series on moral phi- 
losophy. They are very condensed in form, as they 
were prepared for the use of the Senior class, and, 
as they were never expanded, their successive prop- 
ositions resemble a series of mathematical form- 
ulae, no one of which can be omitted without mar- 
ring the sequence of the whole. 

In these he presents and dissects the leading sys- 
tems of ethics, and clearly sets forth his own. Here, 
as in the sphere of purely mental reasoning, the in- 
born orthodoxy of his nature asserts itself. He 
exposes the inadequacy of utilitarianism, the vague- 
ness and limitations of materialism, emphasizes the 
reality of moral distinctions, and accepts and rec- 
ommends for guides only those philosophers whose 
systems recognize an authority " above man's rea- 
son working within the narrow limits of man's ex- 
perience." 

His instruction in morals was not so deeply 
imbued with the religious element as was that of 
his contemporary, Dr. Mark Hopkins, of Williams 
College, but it was "ethical" in the highest de- 
gree. With the mental meanderings of the Trans- 



1 66 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

cendentalists he had no patience, and with the hard 
immorality of the Positivists just as little. The 
combination in himself of a strong practical bias, and 
of the qualities upon which depend the perceptions 
of faith, and the varied activities of the spiritual 
nature, gave him a place mid-way between the relig- 
ious teacher and the secular philosopher. 

His teaching on the evolutionary theory, as ex- 
pounded by Herbert Spencer, was what would be 
predicted of a mind such as his. In the course of 
his lectures on moral philosophy, he says : " It should 
be said that the ethics of Mr. Spencer, as well as the 
school to which he belongs, are the logical products 
of the attempt to reduce God, man, and nature to a 
materialistic unity of existence. The order of na- 
ture, which to Cuvier, Agassiz, and Faraday was the 
incarnation of an Infinite Mind, is to Mr. Spencer 
a mere process, which furnishes no evidence of a 
will and an intelligence adequate to the organiza- 
tion and control of the vast outline and infinite com- 
plications of the universe. This process, under the 
alias ' Evolution,' a mere abstract term, naming a 
vast number of essentially different modes of action, 
is converted into a concrete entity, by which the 
'aggregate of phenomena,' physical, intellectual, 
and moral, has been 'wrought out,' or in plain 
terms, created. This use of the term 'evolution* 
is an illustration of what may be appropriately 
called 'The idolatry of general concepts.' We have 
a cultus of evolution, and men who revolt from 



AT ROCHESTER 1 67 

the doctrine of a God, find no intellectual difficulty in 
clothing a ' process ' with all the attributes of the 
Deity, with the exception of those which are moral 
and render him worthy of our adoration and love." 

From these brief extracts and comments may be 
learned, in a general way, Dr. Anderson's place 
among metaphysicians and moralists. A more 
thorough study of his utterances on these subjects 
will confirm what has been seen already, that he 
distinguished, with intuitive directness, between 
what is specious and what is genuine, between 
sound and sense. These lectures he gave to the 
Senior class. 

They were followed by others. History, as has 
been said, was in his opinion a study of fundamental 
importance. From the time when he introduced it 
into the college course at Waterville until the end 
of his teaching, historical investigation and applied 
historical method were, as he said, " hobbies " with 
him. Of what value to the thorough and philo- 
sophical student of language, literature, science, or 
religion, is the knowledge of their present and 
ephemeral phases, unillumined by the light shed, 
and shed only, by a knowledge of the past ? To the 
student ignorant of history, broadly understood to 
include streams coursing down the ages through 
channels now widely divergent but once united, 
there is no intelligent knowledge possible. Time 
is the most important factor in every problem and 
change is its inevitable coefficient. 



1 68 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Dr. Anderson had a natural love of facts. He 
often claimed a "nose for news" as a feature of 
his mental physiognomy. His collection of " knowl- 
edges " has been aptly described as " encyclopaedic," 
rather than "organic and closely systematized." 
But his qualifications as a teacher and a student of 
history were of a much higher order than those of 
the ordinary fact collector. 

He says, speaking of the methods of instruction 
in the university : " We endeavor to give the his- 
torical development of every department of learning 
and science which we teach. We hold that no body 
of scientific systematic truths can be thoroughly 
understood except in the history of their origin and 
laws of growth. Hence, we are always teaching 
history, from the beginning to the end of our 
course. Our aim is never to lose sight of the his- 
toric method. We seek also to compare w r ith each 
other all stages of scientific growth, all forms of 
literature and art, all the phenomena of law and 
social organization, to compare the old and the 
new, the barbarous and the civilized, the forms of 
language, the types of nature, all manifestations of 
mental and moral action. In this way only can we 
reach that comprehensive and organized system of 
thought which should distinguish the educated man 
of the nineteenth century." 

It was along these lines that Dr. Anderson's 
claim to scholarship lay. His immense assortment 
of facts, and his philosophical grasp of historical 



AT ROCHESTER 1 69 

relations marked him as a historian of rare qualifi- 
cations. He possessed an element which was akin 
to genius, an intuitive foresight almost startling 
sometimes in its fulfillments. His gift in this 
respect had also this characteristic of genius — that 
it was unknown to or unappreciated by its possessor. 
Like Dante, who would paint a picture, and 
Raphael, who would write a sonnet, he was half un- 
conscious of this real and remarkable power, or was 
indifferent to it. It has been said of him that he 
was himself a shining example of a philosophic 
doctrine the truth of which he stoutly denied — that 
of intuition. Some of the topics of his historical 
lectures were " The Decline of the Roman Empire," 
"The Feudal System," "Mohammedanism," "The 
Canon Law," and the series of agencies which 
developed the States system in Europe. 

In other lectures he took up subjects of a 
politico-economic nature, a line of thought always 
suited to his taste. He delivered lectures on 
"Banking," "Taxation," "The Scientific Theory 
of Money," " International Commerce," and kindred 
topics. He was so intensely interested in problems 
pertaining to government and to statecraft that 
even the demands of his teaching and other scho- 
lastic work did not prevent him from giving utter- 
ance to his views on these subjects. During the 
years of " Reconstruction " he was alive with sug- 
gestion on the problems confronting the country. 
Two long letters addressed to President Grant on 

p 



170 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the " San Domingo Treaty," and the " Inflation of 
the Currency," bear witness to the practical char- 
acter of his interest. His views on " Reconstruc- 
tion " are given in a letter to Judge Tourgee, and 
printed in the " Fool's Errand," in the chapter 
entitled "The Oracle Consulted," over the name 
" Enos Martin." Had he chosen the arena of poli- 
tics for his own, there is no position to which he 
might not have aspired, and which he would not 
have filled with credit to himself and advantage to 
his country. 

He was thoroughly American. He understood 
the fundamental principles on which his country 
was founded, believed in them, and upheld them. 

From among his many public addresses extracts 
are given here from two of especial interest, 
because they give his opinions on two subjects 
which he had much at heart. The first address is 
on "Voluntaryism in Education," treating of the 
nature of the American college and its relation to 
State support ; the second is an address delivered 
when as chairman, he opened the Convention of 
College Presidents, held at Ithaca, N. Y., and 
expresses his views on " Elective Courses." 

THE AMERICAN COLLEGE. 

It should always be borne in mind that a dis- 
crimination should be made between institutions — 
like the German Gymnasia and the typical Ameri- 
can college — which contemplate giving a certain 
degree of culture preparatory to professional study, 



AT ROCHESTER 171 

and institutions like the University of Berlin, which 
are a mere aggregation of professional schools, pre- 
supposing an elementary liberal training on the 
part of all those who are admitted to their lectures. 
Our American college is an indigenous growth, 
adapted to our population and wants, which cannot 
be replaced by any exotic system unadapted to our 
intellectual soil and climate. Its best results are 
secured with a comparatively small number of 
pupils under a discipline that is personal and pa- 
ternal. It may be questioned whether some of our 
older and larger institutions are not, by their very 
size, outgrowing the training functions proper to 
the American college ; and whether in their efforts 
to compass the results and imitate the processes of 
the great Continental universities, they are not los- 
ing sight of the most important duties which, from 
the nature of our educational system, necessarily 
devolve upon them. 

We may not hope to give elevation and solidity 
to our education by transforming the typical and 
indigenous American college into a bungling imita- 
tion of the European university. Let us give life 
and vigor to our present system, and when public 
opinion will justify it, add to our college curriculum 
advanced courses of study for all those who have 
the time and means to pursue them. We shall 
thus preserve the college as the place for disciplin- 
ing mind and forming the character, while we shall 
ultimately provide additional instruction for all who 
have a special vocation for scholarship or science. 
We shall thus secure professional schools for liter- 
ature and science which shall take the place, rela- 
tively to the college course, that is now held by 



172 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the schools of law, theology, and medicine. Let 
us also require a college course, or its equivalent, 
as a preparation for the professions, and there will 
grow up gradually, around all our well-endowed col- 
leges, a collection of real professional schools 
which shall meet all the demands of the highest 
culture in the great departments of human thought 
and investigation. 

We believe that, in the future development of 
the wealth and intelligence of our country, the 
voluntary system, which has been so satisfactory 
and successful in the maintenance of religion, will 
be abundantly able to meet all the demands of 
higher liberal and professional education. We 
would then confine State provision for education to 
the common school, and to institutions that may be 
found necessary to train teachers for the common 
school. We have the most implicit faith that the 
individual benevolence of the country will, in the 
future, give to those institutions of higher learning 
which show themselves worthy of it, an endowment 
beyond anything that the present century has seen. 
Men of wealth will soon learn, that he only can 
secure a place in the memory and affections of com- 
ing generations who links his name and fortune to 
institutions for the moral and intellectual elevation 
of his fellow-men. 

It will be seen that in this address he takes a 
position on the subject of State appropriations of 
money for colleges differing from that which he 
held in the earlier years of his presidency. In a 
personal letter to President White, of Cornell Uni- 



AT ROCHI^STER 1 73 

versity, acknowledging one to himself, he says, 
referring to the difference in their views as to 
the legislation upon which that institution was 
grounded, "they (his present views) are honestly 
held, and are the result of nearly thirty years of 
experience in college work. . . I have spent the 
larger part of my life in the State of my adoption. 
If the public has seen fit to withhold from me the 
means to carry out my ideas, it is probably my own 
fault. I am thankful that you will not have to go 
through my bitter experience of blasted hopes and 
fruitless endeavor." A single paragraph from the 
address already quoted from gives his later opinion 
in brief on the voluntary principle : 

The State — as an organism with powers limited 
mainly to the protection of life, property, and per- 
sonal liberty — may not undertake to teach what 
belongs to the domain of conscience. In so doing, 
it transcends its legitimate sphere. High education 
cannot be adequately conducted without the discus- 
sion, in the way of acceptance or denial, of God, 
the soul, the objective sanctions of morality, and all 
the forces which bind a man to God. As this high 
education, in order to be scientific and thorough, is 
conveisant with the sphere of topics which involve 
religious and moral principles, it should be referred, 
like religious beliefs and modes of worship, to the 
action of the voluntary principle. This would ex- 
clude from the charge of the State, except for giv- 
ing the power to hold corporate property and con- 
fer degrees, all collegiate and professional education. 



174 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

One more extract from the closing portion of this 
address is of importance, as it gives his position on 
the subject of the denominational, or as they are 
improperly called, sectarian colleges. He says : 

I am aware of the persistent ridicule — not to say 
misrepresentation — which has been expended upon 
what the opponents of the voluntary system have 
been pleased to call " sectarian colleges." They 
forget that there may be a sectarianism of skepti- 
cism and irreligion as positive and as bitter as any 
that exists within the limits of religious denomina- 
tions. As a general rule, it is not true that the 
colleges of our country have been used as instru- 
ments for propagating the tenets of religious sects 
among their students. Such a charge, indiscrimi- 
nately made against those who control the Ameri- 
can colleges that have derived their main endowment 
from religious denominations, may be justly desig- 
nated as slanderous. No man acquainted with the 
broad-minded, liberal, and learned men who have the 
control of these so-called " sectarian " institutions, 
can either intelligently or honestly charge them with 
using their positions for sectarian purposes in any 
legitimate sense of the term. No thoughtful man 
can ignore the work which such " sectarian col- 
leges " as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, 
Columbia, and Brown have done for the country. 
These have all been predominantly controlled by 
some denomination of Christians, and they repre- 
sent to-day the highest type of our intellectual 
growth. They have saved us from educational bar- 
barism. They have adopted into their curriculum 
every new science which has established any just 



AT ROCHESTER 175 

claim to recognition. They have been nurseries of 
public morality and of an exalted patriotism. They 
have given tone and elevation to our literature. 
They have furnished an education distinctively 
American — a better preparation for American pub- 
lic life, whether political, professional, or mercan- 
tile, than can be furnished by any institutions in the 
old world, however broad and comprehensive their 
courses of instruction may be. They furnish the 
ideal to-day which the newer institutions of the 
country, established under State patronage, are pain- 
fully and laboriously striving to realize. 

The second address mentioned, delivered at the 
Conference of College Presidents of the State of 
New York, discusses elective courses of study. 
The character of his opinions on this point will be 
already inferred from his general conservatism, and 
is indicated in the following quotation. 

These specimen portions of organized knowl- 
edge which are to be made the basis of a sys- 
tematic and broadly liberal education must be 
selected. This selection ought to be made by the 
professional teacher. Here I wish to say that I 
consider the business of the teacher a profession, 
and I hope the time will come when it shall be 
recognized as such, as universally as that of the 
lawyer, doctor, or clergyman. It is not so now. It 
has been my experience, and I have no doubt it has 
been the experience of many of you here, [that] we 
find very few wdio do not assume to understand the 
laws which underlie the selection of the course of 
study best fitted to develop a young man's faculties 



176 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

better than the professional teacher. I think the 
teacher who has spent a lifetime in studying the 
processes and results of disciplinary training, is 
entitled to respectful attention when he recommends 
certain portions of organized knowledge as best for 
the development of the mind and preparation for 
the business of life. The opinions of individual 
teachers are increased in weight when they har- 
monize with those of the great community to which 
they belong. There is a substantial agreement 
among the great body of experienced teachers in 
reference to the selection of those studies which 
shall be made the basis of liberal education. I say 
a substantial agreement. We should not be men 
if we did not disagree in some particulars. They 
believe in giving students their choice among 
studies to a certain limited extent in the latter part 
of the college course, but in general, experienced 
teachers do not believe in permitting young men to 
select indefinitely from the various departments of 
knowledge, according to their own idiosyncrasies 
and tastes. Young men often make their election, 
when their range is free, without regard to the laws 
of scientific method, or the relations of the studies 
to each other, following a zigzag course like that of 
a brook through a mountain valley. Their intel- 
lectual tastes lead them to follow the line of least 
resistance. Most students , select, naturally, the 
courses easiest for them, studies in which they can 
take the highest rank with the least effort. Human 
nature is human nature the world over. Neither 
they, nor their parents, have in general the knowl- 
edge and experience fitting them to make a wise 
selection. The professional teacher should make 



AT ROCHESTER 177 

that selection. If they are not better prepared to 
make it than men who have not given their lives to 
the work of instruction, they are unworthy of a 
place in their profession. . . 

These two addresses have been largely quoted 
from, because they give in his own words, Dr. 
Anderson's positions on two mooted educational 
questions of his time. In 1875 he delivered a 
series of six lectures before the Cincinnati College, 
at Cincinnati, Ohio, on the " Relations of Ethics 
and Jurisprudence." These lectures elicited warm 
admiration from all the best lawyers of the city. 
His mastery of legal subjects surprised their most 
accomplished jurists. He delivered a course of 
lectures on the scientific method before the School 
of Theology of Boston University, of which a 
reviewer says : " Rarely has it been our good fortune 
to listen to so thorough an exposition of funda- 
mental truth. The eternal pillars of a spiritual 
philosophy were seen to rise before us, and the 
dome of the fair temple shone across the campagna 
of physical and metaphysical truth." His last 
series of lectures was delivered in 1885, before the 
students of the Crozer Theological Seminary, at 
Chester, Pa. His subject was " Ethical Science." 

In 1875, a " Macedonian cry," to quote his own 
description of the call, was sounded to him, to come 
and help Chicago University. Dr. J. S. Burroughs 
was about to retire, and the university was in a 
very critical state. Its death knell had practically 



178 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

sounded. As more labor, and more arduous, is 
demanded of one who attempts to resuscitate an 
old cause than of one who undertakes to create a 
new one, it could not have been expected that Dr. 
Anderson would see his sphere of duty to be there, 
at his age, even if he could have been drawn from 
Rochester. His reputation was, at this time, at its 
height, but his strength was beginning to wane. He 
had been for three years president of the American 
Baptist Missionary Union, and for a shorter time 
of the American Home Mission Society. He was 
associate editor of Johnson's Encyclopaedia, and his 
industry in connection with that work was indefati- 
gable. Toward the latter part of the '70's he 
began vigorously to try to raise the sum of two 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the endow- 
ment of the college. This effort required the cour- 
age of a David and the strength of a Hercules. 
Before that amount was secured, his health gave 
way. During the summer of 1877 he was sub- 
jected to a long and severe illness in Maine. His 
friends at a distance were prepared by letters to 
hear at any time of his death, and his relatives in 
Bath were summoned to what was thought to be 
his death-bed. He recovered, however, and re- 
turned to Rochester in the autumn, but did not 
dare trust himself to attend the college exercises. 
As soon as his strength and the weather permitted, 
he went South for the winter. There he gathered 
a relay of health, and he resumed his college work 



AT ROCHESTER 1 79 

in the summer of 1878. The " College Campus," 
the college paper published by the students, under 
date of May, 1878, says: " Dark were the forebod- 
ings when he left for Florida. When, therefore, 
he returned, we almost feared to see him ; we 
feared to see an old man, physically and mentally 
broken down. On his entering chapel the cheering 
was loud and prolonged, testifying to the fact that, 
in appearance at least, it was still the doctor. His 
first words filled all hearts with rejoicing. . . There 
remained but the clear fact that Dr. Anderson's 
vigor of intellect was unimpaired." 

During the next few years, however, under the 
strain of financial anxiety, it seemed at times as 
though his mind was giving way. His memory 
became somewhat impaired, and he was the victim 
of attacks of terrible depression. When, however, 
in 1 88 1, the endowment was assured, his vigorous 
constitution proved its strength, and he regained 
his wonted health. His letters during that time of 
money-raising are pathetic. He says that he is 
trying to be patient, to meet disappointment with 
resignation, and success without undue elation. 
He breathes deep sighs of weariness, of body and 
of spirit. From every journey, whatever its result, 
he turns to his home with a wish that he might 
never be obliged to leave again its peace and rest. 
To his wife these later letters express an ever-deep- 
ening affection, and a growing appreciation of what 
had been her share in the successes of his life. 



l8o MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

After the endowment was secured, he thought 
strongly of resigning immediately. The office of 
the presidency had become a great burden. He 
was not old, but he was enfeebled, and felt con- 
scious of failing powers. He could not rest, or 
even relax sufficiently his labors, while he held the 
executive office. With unremitting assiduity in 
these first days of infirmity, he kept up a corres- 
pondence that would have been a sufficient occupa- 
tion in itself for some men. The newly started 
college for women at Poughkeepsie interested him 
intensely, as a large correspondence with Mr. Vas- 
sar and others indicates. His election as a trus- 
tee of that institution involved added responsibility. 
His college duties had been at no time neglected, 
and he had been often compelled by emergencies 
to do the work of others as well as his own. 

One feature of his college custom had long 
been the giving of informal talks to the students, 
two or three times a week, when they were assem- 
bled for the chapel exercises in the morning. In 
these "chapel talks," he was practical, philosophi- 
cal, serious, humorous, as the mood or topic of the 
hour prompted. Before a sympathetic audience, 
unrestrained by the conventionalities of " set " 
occasions, he was in favorable conditions for 
impressive speech making. To many of his stu- 
dents these were never-to-be-forgotten " talks," and 
one or two extracts are given here, to recall to the 
"boys " some of those telling scenes. 



AT ROCHESTER l8l 

Perhaps to their mature taste and thought the 
chapel talks may seem a little disappointing, 
because, although they were stimulating and sug- 
gestive to young men, they had not the real depth 
and strength of his class-room work. In his reci- 
tations he was sometimes almost magnificent. He 
would become fired with the subject which he had 
in mind, and forgetting the lapse of time, would 
blaze away with irrepressible excitement, until it 
seemed that there was no display of mental or 
moral power to which he was not adequate. He 
would exhaust the energy that should have lasted 
for a week in an hour, and would seem to have a 
supply only limited by the limits of the recitation. 

A man sees what he carries eyes to see. A man 
goes all the way to Rome to see the Pantheon. 
When he gets there he is surprised to see nothing 
but a building. He sees nothing in it, for it calls 
up nothing to him, none of its history, none of the 
associations, none of the ideas connected with it. 
An uneducated man asked my friend while passing 
along the streets of Rome who Pont. Max. was, 
supposing it stood for a man's name, and not know- 
ing that it was an abbreviation for Pontifex Maxi- 
mtcs. 

Gentlemen, it will be harder for you to get your 
intellectual kites up in your time than it was for 
me. You will have greater competition. 

A man cannot doubt his own existence ; if he 
does he has no p oil sto. Neither can a man prove 



l82 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

his own existence. He cannot go back of those 
fundamental principles which underlie the belief in 
any existence. 

Goethe attracts me less than any of the modern 
poets. He is a man of transcendent genius ; but a 
passage in Scripture applies to him more than to 
any other — carnal, sensual, devilish. Byron's 
poems are a relief compared to those of Goethe. 
He carries the antidote along with the disease. 
Shelley was an honest infidel, if there is such a 
thing, and many of his poems give good lessons ; 
but Goethe is wholly bad, nothing redeems him in 
my estimation. He dwelt apart from his people, 
caring little for them. He had no patriotism, no 
sympathy with his own age or time. He held the 
same relation to the people and conditions of his 
time that Erasmus held to the Reformation — that 
it was well enough so long as it did not interfere 
with his affairs. 

From these chapel talks, as well as from his reci- 
tation room, the earnest men of the institution or 
the class went away awed, sobered, made to feel 
that a charge of intellectual dynamite had been 
imparted to them. They might be little, and know 
little, but they would make the most of what they 
were, and do their best in the great life by-and-by. 
To put such a spirit into a man is more than to 
teach him to master a science, and such an influence 
Dr. Anderson perpetually exerted. 



IX 

THE CLOSING YEARS 



So, still within this life, 

Though lifted o'er its strife, 
Let me discern, compare, pronounce, at last, — 

" This rage was right i' the main, 

That acquiescence vain, 
The future I may face now I have proved the Past." 

— Robert Brow7iing. 

I could not live without you at my side, love ; 
You will not linger when I shall have died, love ; 

— Joseph Brenan. 



IX 



THE CLOSING YEARS 



"1T 7 E live in deeds not years." In 1882, at the 
V V age of sixty-seven, according to the present 
standard of human life, Dr. Anderson was not old. 
But infirmity, the relentless tyrant which rules more 
rigorously than the gentle years, and which de- 
mands a strict accounting for sleepless nights, over- 
taxed strength, and other habitual disregardings of 
nature's laws, had marked him for its own. Rheu- 
matism had been for many years fought off with 
doubtful success, and now it began to get the mas- 
tery. He was obliged to reinforce his weakened 
and stiffened limbs with two canes. The disease 
had settled in the hip, had defied all treatment, 
and besides causing excruciating pain at times, 
made motion difficult. His hair was whiter than 
his father's at the time of his death at the age of 
eighty-six. His complexion was pallid, and his face 
and form were thin. In his eyes and voice, however, 
remained almost unaltered the fire of his prime. 
" Oh, doctor," he used to say to one of his col- 
leagues, who was finding the hardest work of his 
life to consist in idleness, forced upon him by a 
weakness of the head, " what would I not give if 

185 



1 86 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

my legs served me as yours serve you!" "Ah, 
doctor," would be the answer, "you can have both 
my legs if you will give me your head." 

After the obtaining of the endowment fund he 
did not immediately resign ; but he traveled little, 
wrote fewer letters, and for those employed a secre- 
tary, made few public addresses, and gradually 
withdrew from outside activities. He attended the 
session of the Baptist State Convention at Rome, 
N. Y., in 1884, and a year later, as has been men- 
tioned, he delivered a series of lectures on " Ethical 
Science," at Crozer Theological Seminary. These 
were the most prominent public duties which he 
performed in the last few years of his administra- 
tion in the college. The community and the de- 
nomination realized that the time was short in 
which to show him evidences of the esteem in which 
he was held, and such attentions as his health per- 
mitted him to enjoy were extended to him. Ten 
years earlier, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth 
anniversary of his entering upon the duties of the 
office which he still held, the citizens of Rochester 
had given him an ovation, in Corinthian Hall, on 
the Wednesday evening of commencement week. 
At that time addresses had been made expressive of 
the appreciation with which the community regarded 
the life and the labor so steadfastly and generously 
bestowed upon the city, as well as upon the college, 
and a resolution of affection and gratitude had been 
presented. At the time of his retirement his own 



THE CLOSING YEARS 187 

health, and that of his wife, was too uncertain to 
render it wise, or indeed possible, to make public 
demonstrations of regret. There was also, too 
much of pathos connected with this sundering of 
long and strong ties, to make any demonstrations 
in his own city quite in good taste. In other cities, 
however, as opportunity offered he was the recipient 
of many attentions. One of the most notable of 
these was a reception given to him and Mrs. An- 
derson by the Social Union of Philadelphia, in the 
rooms of the American Baptist Publication Society, 
after the close of the lectures at Crozer. The re- 
ception took place on the evening preceding the 
final lecture, but was intended as a recognition of 
the honor and the pleasure of hearing his voice in 
public and on his favorite themes once more. 

Dr. George Dana Boardman, who had been for sev- 
eral years Dr. Anderson's pastor at Rochester, and 
who was then at his long-time post as the pastor of 
the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, introduced 
the guest of the evening. This introductory speech 
is such a gem in itself and was so beautiful an intro- 
duction to the speaker's former parishioner, that it 
cannot be omitted here. It was as follows : 

There are two men to whom I owe more than to 
any other, living or dead — for my own sainted father 
died when I was but two years old. The one — the 
father of our own dear Dr. Wayland — taught me 
ethics — taught me how to shape my early steps. 
Too soon he ascended to the stars. I owe him a 



1 88 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

debt which is measureless. He took me in my 
youth and inexperience and lifted me on his broad 
shoulders by his character and by his love. If I 
have a place in your hearts, the praise is due to 
him. 

The other is beside me this evening. As a pub- 
licist, he stands unsurpassed. He might have held 
and honored a seat in the Senate of the United 
States. For years he has received the reverence of 
the first men of the Empire State. In the arena of 
education he is competent to pass from one class- 
room to another, an expert in a hundred branches. 
The elaborate article on Engraving, in Johnson's 
Cyclopaedia, illustrates the width and versatility of 
his talents. But it is as a Christian man that I 
love to present him to you. He is so great a man 
that he could attend every prayer meeting in my 
church for a period of eight years. Nearly thirty 
years ago he presented me, a stripling, to the pub- 
lic ; to-night, I present him, a veteran, to you. 

Dr. Anderson spoke at considerable length on 
Education. He referred with sadness, tinged with 
bitterness, to the long-delayed and ofttimes wholly 
forgotten promises made to college officers, which 
if but fulfilled would lighten burdens and prolong 
life. He reviewed his position on the subjects of 
small colleges and elective studies, and closed by 
appealing to the rich men of the country to awake 
to their duties and opportunities. The occasion was 
in every way gratifying ; but he writes to his wife, 
who had not been able to be present, that he could 



THK CLOSING YEARS 1 89 

hardly get through it. "I don't know as I exactly 
made a fool of myself, but it about came to that." 

On the death of Mr. Hiram Sibley, of Rochester, 
about this time, a trustee and a generous friend to 
the college, Dr. Anderson prepared and presented 
the resolutions which were accepted by the Board 
of trustees of the University. Among his corres- 
pondence was found a note from Mr. Sibley, enclos- 
ing a draft which the writer said he sent unsolicited 
" because he wished to convey to Dr. Anderson his 
own sense of the importance of the work he was 
doing for the city, and because he had long been 
conscious that the president was receiving very in- 
adequate compensation for his labors." 

During 1885-86 and 1886-87 ne filled the presi- 
dent's chair and performed its duties. But his 
lameness had very much increased, and Mrs. An- 
derson's health had become very frail. It became 
evident that a change must come. In April, 1888, 
he offered his formal resignation to the Board. He 
assigns as his reasons those which have been men- 
tioned here, and says in closing : 

" I therefore respectfully ask leave to resign the 
Presidency of the University of Rochester, the 
resignation to take effect at the close of the current 
year. In making this request, I beg leave to ask 
of the trustees that they will please to accept my 
heartfelt gratitude for the favorable consideration 
with which they have regarded my efforts to give 
vigor and reputation to the University, and the 



I90 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

courtesy and the attention 'with which they have 
met my suggestions designed to promote this end." 

The resignation was accepted, and the president's 
formal retirement took place at the commencement 
exercises of that year, June, 1888. The event and 
the occasion were full of pathos, almost of tragedy, 
to the older persons present, and of sad interest to 
all. The address to the graduating class was per- 
haps the most striking that he had ever delivered, a 
Socratic swans' song, " who, when they perceive 
that they must die, having sung also in their earlier 
time, do now especially sing, rejoicing that they are 
about to go away." 

As the few, the very few, then present of those 
who remembered the inaugural occasion of 1853, 
surveyed the scene, they saw much more than was 
visible to the outward eye. The forms of the 
departed sat upon the stage and in the audience — ■ 
the patriarchal Dewey, the erudite Maginnis, the 
classic Conant, the scholarly Richardson^ the cul- 
tured Cutting, the brilliant Raymond, the efficient 
Wilder, the gifted Quinby — these, and many others, 
whose advice or money or encouragement, or all 
combined in one, had helped to make the college 
what it was. Dr. Edward Bright, Dr. E. M. Moore, 
Dr. E. G. Robinson, Mr. W. N. Sage, and his brother, 
Mr. Edwin O. Sage, Professor A. H. Mixer, Mr. Elon 
Huntington, and Dr. A. C. Kendrick, were almost 
the only ones living of those who brought forth and 
nursed through its infancy the vigorous institution, 



THE CLOSING YEARS 191 

which in 1888, received its second president. It is 
not out of place here to mention that Mr. Hunting- 
ton has made the remarkable record of having been 
present at every meeting of the Board of trustees 
since the university was founded. Although the 
tide of time has brought him to his eighty-sixth 
year, he is as faithful to its interests as he was in 
his prime. 

The alumni dinner was the event of the week. 
At the commencement exercises in the church no 
allusion had been made to the fact that this was the 
last occasion on which a Rochester audience would 
see that familiar figure in classic cap and gown on 
a commencement stage, but in the informal meet- 
ing of the alumni, that was naturally the topic of 
thought and remark. Admirable speeches were 
made, of which enthusiastic eulogies of the retiring 
president were the spontaneous and fitting theme. 
These were mingled with expressions of cordial 
welcome to the one who was incoming, Dr. David 
J. Hill, for ten years president at Lewisburg, 
and who was Dr. Anderson's own choice for that 
position at Rochester. Mrs. Anderson was re- 
membered with tender sympathy, and a special 
message was conveyed to her, thanking her for a 
life no less devoted than that of her husband to the 
interests of the college. A reception was held at 
the president's house in the evening, which marked 
the conclusion of the official relations between 
Dr. Anderson and the University of Rochester. 



192 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

He officiated at commencement a year later, on 
account of the absence of the new president in 
Europe for a year of advanced study. That last ap- 
pearance was, however, but the shadow from which 
the substance had fled. 

The condition of the college when Dr. Anderson 
left it was excellent. Of course its wants were not 
all supplied. For no living institution is this ever 
likely to be the case. But its financial resources 
had very largely increased, and in endowments and 
property ran considerably beyond a million dollars. 
Its teaching force, most excellent in quality, in 
quantity was fairly equal to the demands of such an 
institution. New buildings had been erected, nota- 
bly the Reynolds Laboratory and the Sibley Library. 
A noble museum of palaeontology had been founded, 
and the technical apparatus had attained respectable 
dimensions. The campus had been much beauti- 
fied, and suggested many a pleasing contrast with 
the past. His gifted successor, Dr. Hill, with a rep- 
utation already made, with the confidence of the 
Faculty, and Dr. Anderson's own personal selection, 
was on the ground and was successfully taking up 
his task. Much "underground work" had been 
done, to use Dr. Anderson's familiar term, more 
than any can know who have not had a kindred ex- 
perience ; but now the superstructure stood upon 
its foundation, of fair proportions and goodlier prom- 
ise. Surely he had " builded better than he knew." 

The latter part of the summer of 1889-90 was 




THE REYNOLDS LABORATORY. 



p. 192. 



THE CLOSING YEARS 1 93 

spent by Dr. and Mrs. Anderson at Fairhaven, 
Vermont, in the home of Miss Allen, who had for 
several years supplied to them the place of daughter, 
friend, and companion. Thither had been sent 
books and manuscripts, in the hope that, in the 
quiet of the village and with the invigorating air 
of that healthful region, the doctor would be able to 
obtain sufficient strength for the preparation of a 
volume of addresses for publication. He did, after 
a short time, find himself very much recuperated. 
Mrs. Anderson regained her health also, and, al- 
though they had gone through with the breaking 
up of a home so dear that to leave it was almost 
like the breaking up of a heart, they both spent the 
summer in comparative health and much happiness. 
During their stay there, Dr. Anderson wrote a very 
large number of letters with his own hand. He 
wrote to the new president of Rochester, to his 
former colleagues, and to many of the old students 
letters of advice, of sympathy, and of reminiscence. 
Some of the students to whom he sent letters had 
been out of college for many years, but he had fol- 
lowed them in their varied careers with the affec- 
tion and minute knowledge of a parent. 

In October of that year he, with his wife, made 
their way, with occasional stops, to Florida. In 
Rochester they made brief calls on a few old friends. 
On one of these they called as Dr. Whitbeck, an "old 
boy" as well as a "beloved physician," was making 
a professional visit. As they left the doorstep 

R 



194 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the invalid, who was several years older than Dr. 
Anderson, said, " Good-bye ; you will see me no 
more on earth." Had he been a true prophet he 
would have said, " I shall see you on earth no more." 
They spent several days in New York City, and 
there Dr. Anderson consulted several publishers 
with reference to a published collection of his 
writings. To Dr. Rossiter Johnson, editor of "Ap- 
pleton's Annual Cyclopaedia," at a farewell call made 
in November, he said, " I shall have my papers 
ready for you in March." 

Accompanied by their friend, Miss Allen, — now 
Mrs. Timothy Merrick, of Holyoke, Mass., — they 
went to- Lake Helen, in Florida. There they had 
spent the preceding winter, and this place they had 
selected as their future winter home. Here Dr. 
Anderson began the labor of revising and editing 
his already printed papers, intending to collect them 
into one volume or more, as their value should sug- 
gest. He had the modesty that accompanies ex- 
ceptional ability, and was as keen a critic of his own 
work as of that of others. He had not a very high 
notion of his literary productions in respect to their 
permanent value. He said of them that they were 
written for occasions, and that they were not adapted 
to permanent preservation. It is a source of great 
pleasure to the many who recognize in his words, 
even on especial occasions, the qualities that alone 
give lasting value to any words, and that invest even 
the most casual utterances with worth, — truth, and 



THK CLOSING YEARS 1 95 

strength, and thought, and learning, — that although 
he was not able to put his material into just the 
form that he had planned, under a judicious hand 
much of it has been collected and is now at the 
command of those who wish to obtain it. 

The Florida weather was balmy, and for a time 
both Dr. and Mrs. Anderson were very well. When 
in Rochester they had referred to a digestive dis- 
order from which Dr. Anderson had experienced 
considerable inconvenience. Early in December 
word was received that this gastric weakness had 
increased, and was proving very serious and obsti- 
nate. Through January there were periods of 
relief, and finally a letter from Mrs. Anderson says, 
"At last I can breathe freely The worst seems 
to be over, and my husband to be on the way to 
complete restoration." As often happens, this im- 
provement was only apparent, and quickly following 
the news of returning health came the announce- 
ment of a sudden collapse, and of the abandonment 
of every hope. Then came a telegram saying that 
Mrs. Anderson was ill. A rapid change of tem- 
perature had given her a cold while she was sitting 
at her husband's bedside, and she had left his room 
to get a shawl to throw around her shoulders. She 
never returned to his side. An attack of pneumonia 
found her always frail body no longer sustained by 
her invincible spirit. Her courage had failed with 
the conviction of her husband's hopeless condition. 
She sank like a flower before a blast ; she had neither 



196 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

will nor wish to live, and died on Saturday, February 
22, 1890, after an illness of about a week. 

When her death was made known to Dr. Ander- 
son he neither spoke nor wept. But between the 
message and Miss Allen's next visit to his room he 
"aged ten years." He had become so terribly 
emaciated and physically weak that a few of his 
former friends, who were near enough to visit him, 
could not look upon the change in that splendi I 
form without tears. As his friend, Dr. Stearns, 
said of his friend, Dr. Sears, it had seemed as though 
that towering, stalwart frame could defy decay. 

Of his mind that was literally true. Its intelli- 
gence never wavered and its strength never suc- 
cumbed. He was himself the controlling spirit of 
his sick-room until his last direction had been given. 
He would not allow a display of emotion, and when 
a visitor, finding him altered beyond what had been 
expected, showed signs of tears or breaking voice, 
he would almost sternly indicate that he wished him 
to withdraw or to command his feelings. He was 
cheerful too, and a burst of humor would sometimes 
reveal a glimpse of the still susceptible as well a*s 
strong soul. He selected the hymns to be sung at 
his wife's funeral and at his own, not knowing that 
they would be but one. When he had remembered 
every friend, had given every order, he said, "All 
ready,"and he "met his Pilot, face to face." He 
died on Wednesday, February 26, 1890, four days 
after the death of his wife. 



THE CLOSING YEARS 1 97 

The quaint words of Henry King seem to have 
been written for them, scarcely separated by the 
shadow of death : 

But hark, my pulse, like a soft drum, 
Beats my approach, tells thee I come ; 
Stay for me there ; I will not fail 
To meet thee in that hollow vale ; 
And think not much of my delay, — 
I am already on the way, — 
Divided, with but half a heart 
Till we shall meet and never part. 

The double funeral, held at Rochester, presented 
one of those tragic scenes not common in a life- 
time. The caskets stood in solemn dignity at 
Anderson Hall, guarded by a deputation of stu- 
dents, for two days preceding the funeral. On that 
occasion a short service was held at Anderson Hall, 
conducted by the Rev. Samuel W. Duncan, D. D., 
now of Boston, Mass., for a number of years Df. 
Anderson's p r itor, in the Second Baptist Church. 
From Anderson Hall the long procession, composed 
of the Faculty of the college, the Board of trustees, 
the members of the " Pundit Club," and other 
prominent citizens, made its way to the church on 
North Street. Down the aisle which for nearly 
forty years they had walked together, past their 
draped and vacant pew, the two caskets were borne, 
and rested together at the platform. The exercises 
were begun by the Rev. James B. Shaw, D. D., the 
veteran pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, of 



I98 MARTIN B. ANDKRSON 

Rochester, for many years the warm friend of the uni- 
versity and of Dr. Anderson. He was the senior of 
the president by several years, and had behind him 
a period of devoted service to a single cause, similar 
in length and spirit to that of his departed friend. 
He led the vast audience in a prayer so celestial in 
its tones and temper that 

The earth faded out from your vision, 
And the Heavens began. 

Rev. F. L. Anderson, the pastor of the church, 
made the first address. He said : 

How tenderly solemn and impressive this occa- 
sion ! How eloquent its voice, how clear its mean- 
ing ! Dr. and Mrs. Anderson occupied no position 
of worldly power, yet their memory compels us to 
tears. They were not rich, but what a wealth of 
affection is theirs to-day. They had no child ; be- 
hold their children. Such is the reward of self- 
sacrifice. Such is the fruitage of lives devoted to 
the good of others. To day we remember the 
words of the Lord Jesus how he said : " It is more 
blessed to give than to receive." This was the cen- 
tral thought of the life of Dr. Anderson. How 
often he has pointed out to me those sacred words : 
" The Lamb slain before the foundation of the 
world," and indicated to me in his vigorous way 
that the universe was built up on the principle of 
self-sacrifice ; that it is God's eternal plan that no 
great or useful work for humanity shall be done ex- 
cept through pain and suffering, and that it is a 



THE CLOSING YEARS 1 99 

part of the Christian's life to live over again the 
life of Christ. Such words were ever upon his 
lips. Such were his dying thoughts, as indicated 
in the letter which he dictated to me the Thurs- 
day before his death. He said in this letter : 
"I realize that I am dying of starvation, and there 
is no likelihood of relief. I am willing to depart if 
my work is done, or to remain to serve my Master 
still longer. It has been the purpose of my life to 
live as far as I might for others ; like my Divine 
Master to give myself for them, and so far to re- 
new in myself that perfect life. This has been my 
only preparation for the final change, the only true 
preparation for that or for life. I want you to 
preach to the people some day on this text : 
< Bearing about in my body the dying of the Lord 
Jesus.' It has been in my thought the most of my 
life." These words are very familiar to those who 
knew Dr. Anderson best. He did not say anything 
new on his death-bed. He was not a religious sen- 
timentalist. He lived his religion day by day and 
year by year to the very last. He was a lion-like 
man. There was about him something of the free- 
dom and the freshness and the force which be- 
longed to an age when the world was younger than 
it is to-day. 

Of Mrs. Anderson, he said : 

How shall I express in words that delicate grace 
which to memory seems almost like the fragrance 
of the roses which loving hands have scattered on 
her bier. . . Her face was of singular purity. 
Her presence was at once a benediction and an in- 



200 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

spiration. She was always planning and caring for 
others. She never seemed to have any time for 
small ambitions. 

Dr. A. H. Strong, of the Theological Seminary, 
followed Mr. Anderson with a tribute to the dead 
president as a citizen : 

We bury to-day the foremost citizen of Roches- 
ter. . . His towering figure has long stood among 
us, a lighthouse in stormy times, a landmark 
in times of peace. When, thirty-seven years 
ago I, then a boy, saw him for the first time stride 
through our streets, I got the impression that he 
had come to conquer the town. In the vigor of his 
prime it was difficult to say whether he belonged 
to Rochester, or Rochester belonged to him. . . 
If we began to analyze, I think we should say that 
his greatest strength lay midway between the 
purely practical and the purely philosophical, on 
that common ground which we may call applied 
science. He was not so deeply interested in spec- 
ulative philosophy or the theory of knowledge as 
he was in the actual workings of the human mind. 
Theology as a system did not greatly attract him, 
but practical ethics did. Abstract jurisprudence 
seemed to him of less account than the historical 
evolutions of legal practice. Not the mere details 
of history or art, but the intermediate region where 
facts are seen in the light of general principles, it 
was his delight to explore. The application of 
science to life was his aim. A few strong points 
of doctrine, like nails, he sought to hammer in. 
Not subtle distinctions, not nice criticism, not the 



THE CLOSING YEARS 201 

gathering of his material into a systematic whole, 
and, above all, not the shaping and polishing of it 
with rhetorical skill, but rather the dogmatic utter- 
ance of his personal convictions and the reiteration 
with tremendous and ever-increasing emphasis of 
what he believed — this was the secret of his power. 
Not long-drawn processes of reasoning, but plain 
statement of fact, with endless illustration drawn 
from his wide reading, observation of men, and 
knowledge of affairs — this made him great in his 
teaching and great in his public influence. 

Grand old man ! Shall we fail to learn the lesson 
that he teaches us to-day ? The path of duty is the 
way to glory. . . In other lives his life will pro- 
duce itself. Another life in another world is to 
furnish an arena for the powers that only sharp- 
ened their tools here. . . Years ago he was pre- 
sented with the freedom of another city, and now 
he has gone to enjoy it. For that indomitable 
spirit there will be some work there — in fact he could 
not live there without work. And as for the body 
which we commit to-day to its kindred dust, let us 
write over it this verse of Robert Browning : 

One who never turned his back, but marched breast for- 
ward ; 
Never doubted clouds would break. 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would 
triumph ; 
Held, we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to 
wake. 

Dr. Hill, president of the university, in the 
closing address said : . . 



202 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

In the group of impressive and imposing 
personalities that have appeared among Ameri- 
can educators, the figure of Dr. Anderson stands 
conspicuous. . . His long term of continuous ser- 
vice, extending over thirty-five years, his distinc- 
tion as the teacher of over a thousand young 
men in the highest range of classical instruc- 
tion, his wide influence in the Church and State, 
his varied knowledge, his freedom from sectarian 
narrowness, his prevailing power with men, his 
patriotism and his rare personal qualities, com- 
bine to make him a notable personage in the 
history of higher education. . . His range of 
knowledge and breadth of intellectual sympathy 
were unusual. The natural amplitude of his mind, 
well furnished by a liberal education, was still 
further expanded by his vocation as an editor. He 
was called upon to think and to express himself 
upon a great variety of questions touching eccle- 
siastical and national life, social progress and moral 
reform. He brought to his work as a professor the 
habits of the editor, and introduced into his college 
a new power of instruction and stimulation by his 
original conception of the " editorial function" Of 
the teacher. He brought to the halls of learning 
the atmosphere of the living world, with its current 
events and contemporary problems, and inspired the 
students with the spirit of their age. . . He laid 
great emphasis on the dignity of man. His very 
religion was practical. He saw man* here on the 
earth, the highest product of creation bearing the 
image of God, struggling to realize his high destiny. 
The studies that interested him most were those 
about man, his nature, his powers, his development, 



THE CLOSING YEARS 203 

his history, his institutions, his possibilities, his re- 
demption from evil. . . Others have taught us 
"to look through nature up to nature's God," but 
he has taught us, in the words of a great preacher, 
"to look through manhood up to manhood's God." 
. . . The most impressive trait in Dr. Anderson's 
character as an educator was his perfect loyalty to 
his convictions, and to a cause that enlisted his 
whole nature. This was the heroic element in him. 
He looked with reverence upon that soul of honor, 
so prominent in himself, whenever found in other 
men. The fidelity with which he lived for the 
cause he had espoused was absolute. In most men 
the interest in education is but an occasional, spas- 
modic impulse ; in him it was a burning, inextin- 
guishable passion of life-long endurance. 

This brief biography necessarily presents but an 
outline of a full and important life ; a few salient 
points only of the character and career of a noble 
man. No extended analysis can be attempted, but 
a few closing words may not inappropriately sug- 
gest an estimate of the real significance of his life. 

As a boy, as a student, as a teacher, as an editor, 
as an executive officer, as a preacher, he was a force ; 
he cut a broad swath and drew a deep furrow. He 
was many-sided ; but in this characteristic, contrary 
to the general rule, lay one of the sources of his 
power. He had so much ability that he could be 
divided without being diluted. He has been called 
inconsistent, dogmatic, prejudiced, and narrow; but 
the same critic, if the truth were spoken, would be 



204 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

obliged to admit that he was also honest, liberal, 
candid, and broad. Of few men could so many 
opposites be truthfully affirmed. 

His most extraordinary gifts were exhibited in 
addresses on special occasions ; his widest acquire- 
ments in his numerous printed papers on subjects 
equally varied and profound ; his intellectual strength 
appeared at its best, perhaps, in his class-room ; the 
vivacity and reach of his mind were often brilliantly 
displayed in casual conversations, in which he would 
kindle and instruct without effort and almost un- 
consciously. But the essence of his value to his 
generation lies in his moral and intellectual sound- 
ness, earnestness, and fidelity. It is not as a writer, 
nor as a scholar, nor as a thinker, nor as an admin- 
istrator, that he will live, although he was eminent 
in each of these realms ; but he has won his earthly 
immortality in precisely the sphere he would have 
chosen — as a Christian man, whose whole being was 
alive with zeal to elevate his fellows. Not on the 
campus, nor in the city, will his real monument be 
seen; to find it the seeker must "look around" in 
the hearts and lives of men. 

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 

And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. 




BUST OF DR. ANDERSON IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. p. 204. 

The gift of the artist Johnson W. Munday. He afterward became blind, and in this 
condition modeled and chiseled the full-length statue of Washington Irving. 



X 

A PERSONAL PORTRAITURE 



When all have done their utmost, surely he 

Hath given the best who gives a character 

Erect and constant, which nor any shock 

Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 

Of flowing or ebbing fates can stir 

From its deep bases in the living rock 

Of ancient manhood's sweet security. 

And this he gave, serenely far from pride 

As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied, 

Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. 

— James Russell Lowell. 



I 

THE MAN 

ONLY a full length portrait can do justice to Dr. 
Anderson's personality. While every part of 
his splendid physique was pervaded by his intense 
life, yet one must see at one view the whole body 
in order to apprehend the whole man. Even when 
he wrapped himself in the academic gown, as he 
poured forth his passionate argument or his impera- 
tive appeal, every fold and wrinkle became instinct 
with vital energy. 

i. Whatever special faculties or qualities he may 
have possessed, his manhood was supreme. In him 
the whole was much greater than the sum of all 
the parts. No function, however important, domi- 
nated him ; he dominated all functions, and regally 
wore them as fitting and becoming vestments. He 
was great as a college president — "a prince among 
presidents, and a president among princes " ; he 
was great as a public speaker and a preacher ; along 
certain lines he was great as a scholar ; he was 
great as an organizer, executive, disciplinarian ; 
doubtless he was qualified to become great as a 
religious journalist, had he not so soon exchanged 
the editor's sanctum for the president's cabinet ; 
but he was greatest of all as a Christian man. 

207 



208 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

I went to Rochester in 1853, the year that Dr. 
Anderson assumed its presidency. My remem- 
brances have, therefore, as their basis the impres- 
sions first made by such a man, at such a time, upon 
a new-comer who had indeed seen something of the 
world and of life, but who was wholly unused to the 
environment of schools and scholars. These impres- 
sions were modified variously by the intercourse 
and experience of subsequent years, but were never 
completely eliminated nor essentially changed. Dr. 
Anderson was then past thirty-eight years of age, 
over six feet in height, straight as the lofty pines of 
his native Maine, of fine proportions and most noble 
presence, " The front of Jove himself, an eye like 
Mars to threaten and command." His students 
somewhat stood in awe of him, and never ventured 
on experiments of familiarity ; but they were as proud 
of him as was Napoleon's bodyguard of their im- 
perial captain. 

2. There was a moral earnestness about the man 
that first won your attention and forever retained it. 
From one angle of vision it might seem to be a 
self-conscious majesty passing into haughtiness. 
Yet Dr. Anderson was not exclusive, except as his 
eager nature, which " scorned delights and lived 
laborious days," readily repelled those who were 
apathetic through indolence or who were offended 
by his serious-mindedness. He was always occu- 
pied, usually pre-occupied ; he was " clad with zeal 
as a cloak," and wore an air of such strenuous and 



THE MAN 209 

urgent business that the idler and the easy-going were 
not likely to intrude upon him. But his earnest- 
ness was indeed sublime. It was exacting to the 
last degree upon himself and upon others. It tol- 
erated no delays, dallied with no dissuasives, capit- 
ulated to no obstacles. It was eager, exigent, 
imperative. When he exhorted us " to bring some- 
thing to pass," or held before us in radiant bright- 
ness "the immense and infinite somewhat which 
lured the soul of Cicero," or laid upon us the com- 
mand to " endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus 
Christ," it was as if some austere and anointed 
prophet was bringing to us the behest of the Al- 
mighty, enforced by the obligatory example of his 
own consuming fervor. A disciplined earnestness, 
force harnessed to right method, at once dynamic 
and directive, exhibiting in itself what it inspired 
and demanded in others ; this is certainly central in 
an energetic and effective life, and no one could 
doubt its regnant presence in Dr. Anderson's man- 
hood. 

3. It might be questioned, perhaps, whether such 
a powerful and almost tyrannical quality would not 
wholly exclude that genuine sympathy without which 
no one can hope to influence his fellow-men for 
good. Dr. Anderson had the sympathy that belongs 
to all strong characters, which shows itself in ap- 
preciation of honest effort and in the demand for 
such effort. He never coddled anybody, nor apolo- 
gized for failures, nor accepted excuses for neglect 



2IO MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

of duty, nor tolerated the sham and the shirk. 
And yet he had wonderful consideration for those 
who were really struggling with difficulties and 
against powerful odds. Sympathy is not soft and 
flabby. Sympathy is a community of feeling growing 
out of a community of experience. It is a heroic 
quality, and is provocative of heroism. It does not 
ask that he upon whom it bestows its grace shall be 
excused from perilous and exacting service ; but it 
rather demands that he shall be thrust into such ser- 
vice, loaded with obligations, confronted with high 
opportunities and solemn responsibilities, as only 
thus can be achieved a worthy character and a worthy 
destiny ; and then it takes delight in inciting him, 
upholding him, aiding him, while he works out his 
career. Such sympathy Dr. Anderson had in abun- 
dance, and it helped to the making of many men. His 
insight into motives was as keen as that of a detec- 
tive, and as impartial as that of a judge. His 
diagnosis approached infallibility, and he could dis- 
sect to the bone ; but his touch had all the tender- 
ness and all the firmness of a true surgeon who is 
intent on saving life. His ambition for men was 
limited only by the possibilities of their attainment. 
He insisted that they should be all that they could 
become, and he was ever ready to give himself to 
the realization of this end. Such was his concep- 
tion of a manly and effective sympathy, and such 
was his embodiment of it in practice. Socrates — ■ 
according to Plato — was fond of representing him- 



THE MAN 211 

self as following the profession of his mother in the 
practice of midwifery, when he was helping to the 
birth of new ideas, the uplifting convictions, the 
moral purposes, which he had awakened to life in 
the mind of the youth of Athens. Dr. Anderson 
was an expert in such spiritual enfranchisement. 
If he had not to the full the matchless skill of Soc- 
rates, he had what was vastly more than a compen- 
sation for it, and what the great Athenian had not, 
the wise sympathy, the hopeful aspiration, the fra- 
ternal or fatherly interest of a transparent Christian 
man. 

4. Dr. Anderson was not a genial man, as the 
term is usually understood, and had not the win- 
some ways of spontaneous cheerfulness. He was 
courteous, polite, unselfish, friendly, sympathetic, 
helpful, sometimes almost gay, with a dignified and 
somewhat awkward gayety ; but he was inclined to 
be introspective and despondent. In persons of 
high ideals, whose knowledge of the world makes 
them indignant at its ignoble aims and contented 
indolence, this is probably not an uncommon expe- 
rience. But special influences were at work in Dr. 
Anderson's case. He had no children, and he died 
without kindred. The earlier students at Rochester 
will remember his venerable father. Between the 
two there was a peculiar affection ; and when the 
father passed away there was left " neither kith nor 
kin " for the son. There was in him the strong: 
family pride of the best New England character, 



212 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

and it would have been his joy could he have estab- 
lished and adorned a historic house. It was a cor- 
responding grief to him that he must mark the 
extinction of his own line. It was a glorious end- 
ing, but still it was an ending. There was hence 
with Dr. Anderson an element of pathos in his 
affection for his students. They were his " genu- 
ine sons," as Paul was wont to call Timothy and 
Titus — born of his brain and heart. He expected 
them to be his successors, constitute his household, 
perpetuate his name, and let the world know that 
he had lived. He could have exulted as David 
exulted, when God spoke to him " concerning his 
house for a great while to come," had such a mes- 
sage come also to himself ; but it did try him 
greatly, as he painfully confessed, that " upon my 
head they placed a fruitless crown, and put a barren 
sceptre in my gripe — no son of mine succeeding." 
And yet he was not rebellious. He loved God, 
and yielded to God, and served God loyally and 
joyfully with the utmost service of his life. No 
man of our time could more rightfully appropriate 
Milton's lofty and serene avowal : 

Yet I argue not 
Against heaven's hand and will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
Right onward. 

Moreover, Dr. Anderson had literary and oratori- 
cal ambitions that were of necessity largely sup- 



THE MAN 213 

pressed. The public will learn in the volumes 
forming the companions of this that he left behind 
him papers and addresses quite worthy of the man 
and of his position. But his occasions of public 
utterance were incidental, infrequent, miscellaneous, 
spasmodic. He delighted in a real occasion, fitted 
to his powers and to his conception of the serious- 
ness of life, when his audience also was apprecia- 
tive and responsive. But by the Divine appoint- 
ment, as he solemnly felt it to be, his duties lay in 
other directions. He was consecrated to the 
founding of a college, and to him came the inces- 
sant drudgery of. working underground and out of 
sight. As he said one day : " My bones are 
being ground up to make cement for these hidden 
foundation walls, on which others may build, but 
which all men will forget to examine." Doubtless 
his fame is surer than he sometimes thought, as 
his service for God and man was greater ; but it is 
not difficult to understand that he should at least 
occasionally chafe in his chains and long to be free. 
In commencement week, a year or two ago, I was 
in Rochester, and one evening found me in a street 
car, alone except for a couple of students of the 
current period, for whom the great president's 
name was already a tradition. They had evidently 
just come from some place where he had been 
warmly eulogized, and were quite spontaneous and 
free in their conversation, not aware that an inter- 
ested listener was overhearing their words. " Is it 



214 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

true," asked one, "that he was such a wonderful 
man as they make out?" "Well," replied the 
other, " they think he was very industrious and 
successful in begging money for them." Comment 
would blunt the point of this testimony. I felt 
grateful that he was well beyond such estimates 
now, though he had most likely often heard them, 
to the sore wounding of his aspiring and unselfish 
heart. And yet it must not be forgotten that no 
man is a safe judge of his own sacrifices. God 
will take care of that, if our lives are wholly given 
to him. Here is Goethe's definition of predestina- 
tion : " God is mightier and wiser than we are, 
and so he does with us as he pleases." The two 
adjectives are indissoluble, and therefore this truth 
is divinely restful and joyful. 

5. Perhaps greater than all these qualities of his 
manhood, and irradiating them all, was Dr. Ander- 
son's true simplicity. In the best sense of the 
word, his was a manly humility. But humility is 
not abjectness, as simplicity must not be confounded 
with puerility. Childlikeness and childishness are 
words closely allied etymologically, but they have 
become appropriated to widely different concep- 
tions. Dr. Anderson worshiped Jesus Christ with 
his whole being. His intellect gladly rested where 
his heart joyfully adored. Hence the peace of God 
kept in unanxious safety his heart and mind. 
Hence also he loved what Jesus Christ loved — • 
truth and holiness and spiritual simplicity, all 



THE MAN 215 

things pure and venerable and lovely and of good 
report. Mr. Gladstone tells us that Lord Mel- 
bourne — Queen Victoria's first prime minister — was 
seen coming from church one day " in a mighty 
fume," because, forsooth, as he vehemently com- 
plained, " the preacher actually insisted upon apply- 
ing religion to a man's private life." Such preach- 
ing was Dr. Anderson's delight, and this was a 
revelation of his simple, manly, spiritual character. 
He wanted no philosophical essays, no discussions 
of political economy in the pulpit, though he had 
keen enjoyment of such matters in their proper 
place. He loved the gospel, and believed it to be 
the power of God unto salvation — the cure of all 
human ills, the only way to the realization of all 
human aspirations and highest possibilities. One 
day in a very solemn service of prayer, he said to 
us : " Young gentlemen, you can never introduce 
others to Jesus Christ, unless you yourselves are 
personally acquainted with him." He was ac- 
quainted with Christ, and could, like Andrew with 
" his own brother Simon," usher others into the 
august and loving presence. 

6. Surely these were qualities that go to the 
making of a man. Each quality was of heroic pro- 
portions, and all were harmonized in a still more 
heroic personality. My sketch may, perchance, 
seem very vague to those who never saw the regal 
bearing nor felt the commanding influence of this 
prince in Israel. But those who really knew him 



2l6 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

in his prime will easily revive the features physical, 
intellectual, spiritual, which were then indelibly im- 
printed in the memory and the affections. Ought 
not the study of such a manhood and such a career to 
do something toward reproducing them ? Consider 
his lofty purposes, his untiring fidelity, his devotion 
to duty, his noble seriousness, his transparent sin- 
cerity, his flaming zeal, his conscious and unre- 
served consecration to God and truth and humanity. 
Measure his achievement by the difficulties that 
hindered it. His life must prove increasingly fruit- 
ful, as are the righteousness and love which formed 
its basis and molded its superstructure. 

Consider now the significance of such a man in 
contrast to the miserable conceptions of manhood 
that so widely prevail. " On earth there is nothing 
great but man," was the motto of Sir William 
Hamilton's class-room. How profoundly true it is, 
and how persistently forgotten ! But etymology, 
the original instinct and self-evidence of speech, 
confirms this and delivers us from the all-devouring 
materialism of science, assuring us that the word 
"man" is vitally akin to the word "mind," and 
means "to think." Man the thinker ; would that 
he vindicated his name ! The man of whom we are 
now thinking did vindicate it. 

Dr. Anderson had in him the making of a states- 
man and the making of a captain, had circum- 
stances favored and duty demanded. He could 
have persuaded listening senates and he could have 



THE MAN 217 

set battalions in the field. In these qualities he 
was like Paul, whom also he resembled in many at- 
tributes. His grasp of general principles and his 
eagerness for prompt and effective and comprehen- 
sive action are additional witnesses. Life was for 
him a warfare, and he sought, with what success 
the day of final review shall declare, to please Him 
who had called him to be a soldier and to lead 
others in his train. 

I think the immortal servants of mankind, 

Who from their graves watch by how slow degrees 
The World-Soul greatens with the centuries, 

Mourn most Man's barren levity of mind, — 

The ear to no grave harmonies inclined, 

The witless thirst for false wit's worthless lees, 
The laugh mistimed in tragic presences, 

The eye to all majestic meaning blind. 

O prophets, martyrs, saviours, ye were great ! 

All truth being great to you ; ye deemed Man more 

Than a dull jest, God's ennui to amuse : 
The world, for you, held purport : Life ye wore 
Proudly, as kings their solemn robes of State ; 
And humbly, as the mightiest monarchs use. 

Lemuel Moss. 

Woodbury, N. J. 



II 



AS A SCHOLAR 



TO indicate in a satisfactory way the place which 
a man occupies as a scholar is difficult, be- 
cause every one has his own idea of what a scholar 
is, and also because there are various types of 
scholarship itself. The character of one's scholar- 
ship may, for example, be determined with refer- 
ence to the breadth of his intellectual attainments, 
the extent of truth which he has brought within his 
possession. In this sense there is an intensive 
scholarship, microscopic, fine, and acute, which 
limits its field of investigation and seeks to make 
an exhaustive analysis of a narrow range of truth. 
There is also an extensive scholarship, telescopic, 
wide, and comprehensive, which seeks to bring 
within its range the broadest domain of fact and 
principle. 

The character of one's scholarship may again be 
viewed with reference to one's attitude toward 
truth in its entirety, the whole world of mind and 
matter. In this sense there may be an exclusive 
scholarship, special, partial, often narrow and 
biased, in which one's sympathy with truth as such 
is limited by a specialty, hampered by a system, or 
218 



AS A SCHOLAR 219 

subservient to a sect. There is, on the other hand, 
a liberal scholarship, impartial, unbiased, confined 
by no specialty, restricted by no system, and nar- 
rowed by no sect, but which is hospitable to truth 
wherever found. 

Moreover, the type of one's scholarship may be 
indicated by its aims, the purposes for which it is 
acquired and used. And so there may be a selfish 
scholarship, egoistic, cynical, mercenary, which ac- 
quires knowledge simply for the pleasure, or orna- 
ment, or reputation, or reward which it may afford. 
But there is also a philanthropic scholarship, altru- 
istic, benevolent, and beneficent, which employs its 
resources for the good of others,' which sees in 
truth a power capable of purifying and uplifting the 
world. 

In performing the duty which has been assigned 
to me of drawing a sketch of President Anderson 
as a scholar, I shall attempt to do hardly more than 
to illustrate, in a brief way, how extensive his schol- 
arship was in its scope, how liberal it was in its 
spirit, and how philanthropic it was in its purpose. 
1. It has been said that "the scholar is that man 
who must take up into himself all the ability of his 
time, all the contributions of the past, and all the 
hopes of the future. He must be an university of 
knowledges." It would not seem an exaggeration 
to say that to very few men of our country, and 
perhaps of our period, could this description be ap- 
plied with more fitness than to President Anderson. 



220 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Whatever qualifications his critics might be inclined 
to make as to the accuracy and minuteness of his 
knowledge in certain specific branches, no one who 
ever knew him could fail to be struck with the sur- 
prising breadth of his intellectual horizon, and the 
vast variety of subjects which came within his men- 
tal vision. 

In no proper sense was he a specialist. His 
mind was in no sense microscopic, seeking to con- 
fine its attention to a narrow range of facts, and 
taking delight in that kind of truth which ap- 
proaches the infinitely small. He was rather a 
generalist. His mind was telescopic, embracing 
the earth and the heavens in its sweep, and strongly 
impressed with those facts and truths which bring 
one nearer to the infinitely great. 

He had a passion for intellectual accumulation. 
No miser was ever more fond of hoarding up golden 
riches than he seemed to be of gathering up the 
valuable treasures of truth. Knowledge was to 
him wealth. He gathered it in heaps. For its at- 
tainment no toil was too laborious, no suffering too 
painful. With an untiring industry, with a vigor- 
ous activity, he ploughed over innumerable fields 
that he might throw up some fresh nugget ; he 
often delved in dark and remote places that he 
might find some rare treasure ; he blazed his way 
through dense forests that he might find some new 
path to the light. And in the success which at- 
tended his labors he felt to the full extent the de- 



AS A SCHOLAR 221 

light incident to discovery. From his earliest boy- 
hood to his latest manhood he never lost this taste 
for acquisition. In books, in nature, in human life, 
in his own consciousness, he sought eagerly for 
what was valuable to know. If a scholar is one 
who is imbued and permeated with, a love of learn- 
ing, he was certainly a scholar in a pre-eminent de- 
gree. 

The extent and variety of his attainments can- 
not be described and can hardly be indicated in a 
few pages. If his students of successive genera- 
tions could compare their " notes," they would form 
some idea of the wide range of studies which he 
had pursued for their benefit. They would find 
lectures upon English language and literature, 
treated in both a historical and a critical way ; lec- 
tures upon rhetoric and oratory, setting forth the 
fundamental laws of expression and persuasion ; 
lectures upon comparative grammar, delivered when 
this science was almost in its infancy ; lectures upon 
scientific method, illustrating the genesis of scien- 
tific ideas and the significance and relation of the 
different sciences ; lectures upon intellectual phi- 
losophy, which enforced the reality of human knowl- 
edge in opposition to idealism and sensationalism, 
and which drew illustrative material from the whole 
field of speculative thought from Plato to Herbert 
Spencer ; lectures upon moral philosophy, which 
were freighted with arguments drawn from the con- 
stitution of nature and of man, and enforcing the 



222 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

universality and the imperative obligations of the 
moral law ; lectures upon general history, which 
comprised the growth of European civilization from 
the fall of the Roman Empire to the present time, 
and which showed a wide acquaintance with the 
standard historians of every country and with 
many original authorities ; lectures upon constitu- 
tional law, which were filled with comparative illus- 
trations drawn from the constitutions of the United 
States, England, and other "modern countries ; lec- 
tures upon political economy, which were based 
not only upon a wide knowledge of economical lit- 
erature, but upon an extensive observation of actual 
phenomena in the industrial world, as well as per- 
sonal conversations with business-men ; lectures 
upon jurisprudence, which showed, for a layman, 
an unusual degree of familiarity with the funda- 
mental doctrines of the civil, the common, and the 
canon law ; lectures upon art-criticism and the 
history of the fine arts, which included discus- 
sions upon architecture, sculpture, painting, and 
engraving, and which not only contained a large 
amount of descriptive and critical material, but also 
revealed a considerable acquaintance with the me- 
chanical processes employed in art-production — be- 
sides many other lectures of a more miscellaneous 
character, all of which were studded with illustra- 
tions such as can proceed only from a richly fur- 
nished mind. 

If his students should care to confer with the 



AS A SCHOLAR 223 

members of a literary club of which he was a 
founder and to which he was a zealous contributor, 
they would find that the idea which they had 
formed of his attainments, based upon the lectures 
that they had heard, was far from being complete. 
They would be referred to elaborate and learned 
essays which he had prepared and read, and of 
which they had perhaps never heard, essays upon 
the ethnology of England, Scotland, Ireland, and 
France ; the origin and dispersion of the Celtic 
races ; the trial by jury ; serfdom ; objections urged 
against the unity of the human race ; Spanish ver- 
sions of the Old and the New Testament ; the 
uses and ends of comparative philology ; Bishop 
Berkeley ; Arabian metaphysics ; personal explora- 
tions in Etruria ; Anglo-Saxon institutions ; the 
catacombs ; tenure of land in England ; relation 
between morality and the positive law ; pauperism ; 
the Roman coloni ; the currency as influenced by 
legislation ; the growth and decline of slavery ; the 
political life of the English people — and other 
essays of a similar nature. The mere enumeration 
of these topics is sufficient to suggest at least the 
breadth of his knowledge and the diversity of his 
intellectual attainments. Literature, art, philoso- 
phy, mathematics, natural science, ethnology, his- 
tory, politics, economics, jurisprudence — all seemed 
to him familiar fields. 

But to many persons such an array of subjects 
might suggest superficiality and ostentation. To 



224 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

one, however, who was conversant with the methods 
and results of his study, such a disparaging view 
would be far from just. His knowledge was 
not only broad, it was also deep — if depth of 
knowledge is to be judged by an acquaintance with 
principles. To every fact he put the question, 
" What does it signify?" With Lord Lytton he 
believed that " a principle is worth a thousand 
facts." Facts merely as such he regarded of small 
account. What might seem to some a lack of care 
and accuracy in specific statements was often due 
to the little importance which he attached to de- 
tails which he conceived to be irrelevant. It was 
just because his knowledge was not superficial, but 
related to the roots of things, that he sometimes 
seemed to ignore what lay upon the surface and 
was patent to all. The use of the comparative and 
historical methods, which he was fond of employ- 
ing, caused him to seek for the relations of co-exist- 
ence and sequence in all the phenomena which he 
studied. His method of investigation was syn- 
thetic rather than analytic. He was fond of group- 
ing rather than dissecting. He was impatient of 
fine distinctions. When he was obliged to distin- 
guish he did it with a cleaver and not with a scal- 
pel. What he sought was not to find out into how 
many minute parts nature could be divided, but to 
discover the analogies and harmonies which are im- 
pressed upon the world and which evince intelli- 
gence and benevolence in the order of things. 



AS A SCHOLAR 225 

A characteristic feature of his knowledge which 
seemed most striking and strange to many, was the 
lack of arrangement and system with which it was 
stored up in his mind. And this often gave the im- 
pression of incoherence and the absence of organi- 
zation. His mind was not like a physician's chest, in 
which every material is put into its appropriate vial 
and marked with its appropriate label and set in its 
appropriate place. His mind was rather like the hold 
of a ship, which to the passenger seems to contain a 
vast and dark medley of merchandise, but which to 
the master is a convenient receptacle of well-invoiced 
goods capable of delivery at any port. He had no 
taste for formal classification, no love for the me- 
chanics of logic. This gave to his knowledge an 
encyclopaedic cast. But it would be a mistake to 
suppose that his knowledge was merely a great col- 
lection of unrelated fragments. Every part had 
impressed upon it a special and appropriate signifi- 
cance, and was related to every other part, not by 
any formal scheme which he had himself con- 
structed, but by those essential principles which he 
believed to run through and harmonize the worlds 
of matter and mind. From his point of view we 
should leave facts as they exist in nature, and not 
disturb them by any artificial arrangement of our 
own, but should strive to perceive in them as they 
actually exist those intelligible relations which show 
them to be the products of a universal Will and sub- 
ject to universal laws. 



226 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

2. Men sometimes think that they love truth, 
when it is only a part of the truth that they love. 
If a man is a specialist he likes the taste of the 
waters which bubble at his own spring ; but all 
other waters are unpalatable. If he is a system- 
atizer he eagerly appropriates those facts which fit 
into his own artificial scheme ; but for all other facts 
he has no use. If he is a sectarian he worships the 
truth which has been crowded into his own creed ; 
but against the truth of other creeds he turns his 
back. It was because President Anderson was not 
a specialist, nor a systematizer, nor a sectarian, 
that he was liberal in the best sense of that much- 
abused word. In his view every specialty and every 
system and every creed has in it something of truth ; 
but no one contains it all. The very taste which he 
had for universal knowledge made him hospitable 
to truth in its various forms. 

The liberal attitude of his mind is specifically 
evident from the high vantage-ground from which 
he surveyed things and truths apparently antipodal, 
and the reconciliation which he tried to effect be- 
tween points of view or systems often regarded as 
diverse or even contradictory. For example, he de- 
plored the distinction which is often maintained 
between men of thought and men of action. He 
appealed to scholars to bring themselves into con- 
tact with the realities of the world; and he en- 
forced upon business men their indebtedness to the 
labors performed by men of science. From the de- 



AS A SCHOLAR 227 

pendence of capital for its growth and maintenance 
upon just ideas of government and legislation, and 
from the great dependence of scholars for their 
livelihood and success upon the contributions of 
wealth, he argued " the necessity of an alliance close 
and intimate between the men of capital and the 
men of ideas." 

So again, in the opposition between conservatives 
and radicals, he did not belong unqualifiedly to the 
one or to the other class. He did not show the folly 
of the over-cautious bigot who would resist the in- 
coming of the future, nor the folly of the dreaming 
enthusiast who would let go his hold upon the solid 
achievements of the past. He possessed the true 
historic spirit which recognizes the close relation 
between the past, the present, and the future. He 
believed in the continuity of progress, the organic 
evolution of the race. He greeted the new, while 
he respected the old. Even decayed beliefs should 
not be ruthlessly shattered like barnacles which 
cling to the sides of a vessel and serve only to 
impede its progress ; they should rather be gently 
shed like the leaves of autumn which have sus- 
tained life for a season and are still beautiful in 
their fall. 

And also in the struggle which was waged be- 
tween classical and scientific learning, he main- 
tained the cause of both. He was among the fore- 
most to welcome the admission of scientific studies 
into the curriculum of a university. But when an 



228 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

assault was made upon the " classics " he stoutly 
resisted the encroachment, claiming that it was "no 
hoary prejudice which induced the scholars of Chris- 
tendom with such unanimity to select the languages 
of Greece and Rome as the basis of the philological 
portion of a liberal education." Each has its place 
and each must be defended and maintained. 

In regard to the sciences themselves, he had an 
equal appreciation of those which deal with mind 
and those which deal with matter. He sided neither 
with the materialist who ignores the reality of the 
individual mind and the cosmic intelligence, nor 
with the idealist who shuts out from his thought 
the whole visible and tangible universe. " Mind 
and its laws," he said, "form the science of meta- 
physics ; matter and its laws the science of physics. 
Though these branches of inquiry are distinct in 
their immediate nature, they nevertheless touch 
each other in numberless points, and a knowledge 
of both is necessary to the full comprehension of 
either." 

Moreover, in the conflict assumed to exist between 
science and religion he took the side of neither, but 
emphasized the inestimable importance of both. He 
deplored the view that there is anything in true 
science which is hostile to religion, as well as the 
view that there is anything in true religion which is 
hostile to science. The obligation to live righteously 
which religion imposes, is entirely consistent with 
the obligation to think rightly which science im- 



AS A SCHOLAR 229 

poses. The God of the Scriptures is also the God 
of nature. A correct interpretation of the doctrine 
of creation, which regards the universe as the intel- 
ligent product of an infinite Will, is not at variance 
with a correct interpretation of the doctrine of evo- 
lution, which seeks to formulate the laws in accord- 
ance with which that infinite and intelligent Will pro- 
ceeds in the processes of creative action. 

And finally in the domain of religion itself, he 
sought for harmony and not for hostility. The 
idiosyncrasies of denominations and sects he be- 
lieved to be necessary for the full freedom of men 
in their search after God, and in their efforts to do 
his will. He never, so far as I am aware, spoke 
with disrespect of any religious sect or order, Prot- 
estant or Catholic, Christian or pagan. He was, in 
the words of Lowell, 

Reverent of whatever shrine 
Guards piety and solace for my kind, 
Or gives the soul a moment's truce of God. 

If there was any limit to his liberality, it was with 
reference to the one who is indifferent to all positive 
knowledge, and to the one who claims to know it 
all. With his great acquirements, he himself pre- 
served an intellectual humility. He well knew 
how far removed are the limits of knowledge from 
infinite truth. He did not sympathize with the 
monist who claims to hold God and the universe 
in one hand. He believed that all truth is one 

u 



2 30 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

and co-ordinated in the mind of the Creator, even 
though its unity may not be fully perceived by the 
mind of man. Men should receive and hold with 
confidence whatever of truth it is given them to 
know ; but they should be humble in the presence of 
the Most High and the "insoluble problems " of the 
universe. To have a "theory of one's ignorance" 
is quite as important as to have a theory of one's 
knowledge. He believed in the inherent powers of 
the human mind to know certain forms of ultimate 
truth. But he also believed in the necessary limit- 
ations of the mind, which preclude the possibility 
of human omniscience. He had no affection for the 
agnostic who would enshroud truth with a garb of 
uncertainty. On the other hand, he had little sym- 
pathy with the dogmatist who would brazenly assume 
the high prerogative of " looking over the shoulders 
of the Almighty." 

3. Scholarship, on the one side, is related to nature 
and truth ; on the other side, it is related to the 
world and human life. That a man cannot be a 
scholar and at the same time be aroused by the 
enthusiasm of humanity, involves a mistaken con- 
ception of scholarship. " The scholar who cher- 
ishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a 
scholar," is an aphorism attributed to Confucius. 
The philanthropic purpose which inspired the schol- 
arship of President Anderson was perhaps its most 
conspicuous feature. While it was unquestionably 
broad and liberal, it was by way of eminence practi- 



AS A SCHOLAR 231 

cal and beneficent. He thoroughly believed in the 
value and power of truth ; and he was most im- 
pressed with those truths which have the directest 
bearing upon the enlightenment and improvement 
of mankind. He looked with lofty disdain upon 
intellectual dilettanteism. He severely character- 
ized the secluded scholar as one " who peeps out 
from his loophole of retreat, finding the pleasure of 
his life and the end of his being in the accumulation 
of mental wealth which he never makes available 
for any good purpose beyond his own enjoyment." 
His own creed, which he believed should govern the 
scholar's life, he expressed in these weighty words : 
" The highest aims of a moral being under the 
government of God must be external to himself. 
His highest law of action is to make all personal 
improvement and gratification subordinate to the 
good of those with whom he stands in relation." 
This high ideal of the scholar's vocation seemed to 
inspire his life's work. 

Even the knowledge which he acquired seemed 
to have a kind of practical rather than a mere theo- 
retical cast. The purpose which he evidently had 
in view in accumulating his vast stores of informa- 
tion, was not so much to make any real contribu- 
tions to science as to widen and enrich his own 
views of the world and of human life, and so to 
make them instruments of personal power and of 
social improvement. He gathered in order to give. 
This conviction of the ethical value of truth and 



232 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

the philanthropic ends to which it could be put, 
seemed to grow upon him and to deepen with ad- 
vancing years. One who studies his writings in 
chronological order will, I think, see a gradual ten- 
dency away from purely scientific studies in the 
direction of those which bear upon the settlement 
of great moral questions, and the solution of prob- 
lems which affect the well-being of society. He 
began his scholarly career with studies upon literary 
criticism and comparative philology. He closed it 
with studies upon the ethical bases of government, 
law, and economics, and with specific investigations 
into the condition of the defective and delinquent 
classes, and the causes and relief of pauperism. 

Not only the knowledge which he acquired but 
the mental ability which he developed was evidently 
that which is most effective in accomplishing an 
ethical purpose. To him one of the supreme ends 
of scholarship was the development of the capacity 
for leadership. To influence, to guide, and to con- 
trol men was to him one of the great functions of 
the scholar. Truth to be influential must be em- 
bodied in a person. He was the impersonation 
of influential thought. Few men have occupied 
an equally high position as a general counsellor 
to those with whom they have been related. He 
was constantly sought after for advice, and he was 
constantly giving advice. He was forever look- 
ins: for the one who was in the need of intellect- 
ual help, and the one who was in the need of 



AS A SCHOLAR 233 

such help spontaneously looked to him. " To in- 
quire and to answer inquiries," says Dr. Johnson, 
" is the business of a scholar." To such business 
President Anderson was devoted, and for it he pos- 
sessed a remarkable adaptability. 

He also possessed in a high degree the power of 
persuasion. Some men, it is true, distrusted him. 
But the great mass of men believed in him, and 
were moved by him. This power was often re- 
garded as a kind of inspiration. It is true that 
he often moved men by inspiring them. But his 
persuasive force was primarily based upon his ca- 
pacity to create intellectual convictions. This was 
not necessarily accomplished by a finely wrought 
chain of syllogistic argument. It was more usually 
accomplished by setting forth a great truth in its 
bald outlines, so that no one could mistake its sig- 
nificance. The most fundamental truths cannot 
be proved ; and it was with such truths that 
he most often dealt. He appealed to the intel- 
lectual instincts of men, to the common, universal 
sense. He believed that if the truth was properly 
lifted up it would draw all men unto it. Whether 
as teacher in the class-room, or orator on the plat- 
form, the thousands of illustrations which he used 
were employed more as lamps to illumine than as 
arguments to prove. With his deep faith in the 
receptivity of the human mind and its essential 
adaptation to know truth, he persuaded men. 

The final purpose of all his attainments and all 



234 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

his abilities as a scholar was to serve his fellows, 
and in fulfilling this purpose he became a center of 
enlightenment and a source of benefaction. " The 
criterion of a scholar's utility," says Coleridge, " is 
the number and value of the truths which he has 
circulated and the minds he has awakened." 
Judged by this standard, few men have so fully 
accomplished the life-work which belongs to the 
true scholar as did President Anderson. 

William C. Morey. 

Rochester, N. Y. 



Ill 

HIS PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN. 

TRUTH regnant in life is the mightiest power in 
the history of man. The power to make truth 
live in the lives of others is the teacher's royal en- 
dowment. The gift of thus evoking mental and 
moral power is the mark of the true teacher. 
This pre-eminent gift of the teacher was the strong- 
est trait in Dr. Anderson's strong personality. He 
saw clearly and felt intensely that the object of 
education is to call into action new power, and to 
render this power effective for good. 

Himself a man of rare power, recognizing power 
in others, strenuous in his demand that all personal 
power be used for the noblest ends, he felt that no 
one so truly calls out and perpetuates the noblest 
powers in others as does the teacher who imparts 
to young men truth which dominates the life of him 
who receives it, and through him gives an impulse 
to others. With Socrates, when his friends urged 
him to devote himself to affairs of State rather than 
to teaching, on the ground that great powers such 
as his would produce greater results in practical 
politics than in teaching, Dr. Anderson would have 
answered — did answer : "If I wish to turn the 

235 



236 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

course of a stream, I take it near its sources." He 
knew the far-reaching influence of his personal re- 
lations with young men ; and he believed in the 
power of the truth he taught. 

In the history of our American colleges, when- 
ever a strong teacher has emphasized in his teach- 
ing, the will — not in abstract speculations, but with 
a living interest in history, law, politics, and social 
reform, there immense power has been developed. 
Strengthened at the very center of being, young 
men have become strong indeed. Dr. Anderson 
was such a teacher, such a fortifier of young man- 
hood at the citadel of personality. 

The present was consciously rooted in the past 
for him. The spirit of history, the historic method, 
characterized all his teaching. But the past was of 
value to us in his class-room only that it might en- 
lighten us in the present, and incite and guide us 
in the future. While his courses in history and 
political economy were of real value on every ac- 
count, their highest value lay in the fact that his 
familiarity with these subjects gave definiteness to 
his views of the citizen's duty to the State, to 
society, in the present. His interest in the theory 
and the history of law — of public law, especially — 
gave to his students confidence in his leadership as 
they studied questions of politics and reform. 

But all his teaching was, above all else, ethical. 
If you sat in his lecture-room for a term, you felt 
that you personally were in living relations with the 



RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN 237 

past, and by all that the past had done for you, you 
were under sacred obligation to develop to the full 
all your powers, to use all your opportunities, in the 
effort to make better the present and the future — 
to serve the men of your generation fearlessly, un- 
selfishly, unceasingly. This was the conviction that 
came upon every student who heard senior lectures 
from Dr. Anderson. Sometimes this high calling 
flashed upon the vision, sudden and compelling, like 
that blow from the sword in the hand of an older 
knight, which, falling on the shoulder of the boyish 
squire, made him thenceforth forever one dedicate 
to highest, most unselfish service. With students 
of a different temperament, the marshalling of facts 
and arguments which show the reign of law, phys- 
ical, moral, and social, as the work of the year 
went on became an irresistible force ; and there 
came upon them gradually, with growing clearness, 
with binding yet inspiring power, a conviction which 
changed the aspect of life for men who had entered 
upon the work of the year selfish and careless. 
Conscious of new powers under this vivifying 
teaching, they recognized new obligations. The 
teaching claimed the surrender of petty, selfish 
aims, and called for the acceptance of the highest 
standards, intellectual and spiritual. Of the men 
who completed a year's work with Dr. Anderson, 
few were those who were not ready to say rever- 
ently to duty : " In the light of truth thy bondsman 
let me be." 



238 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

In his loving and intelligent efforts to secure by 
his teaching these results, Dr. Anderson studied 
and respected the personality of the men with whom 
he came into close personal relations. He under- 
stood the importance of a young man's life to him- 
self. 

The wise man does not sneer at the over-weening 
interest which every young person feels in his own 
life — at the intense importance to himself of all his 
thoughts and feelings and experience. Rather does 
the wise and sympathetic older man see in this 
God's provision for setting every young man at the 
task of discovering his own powers and how best 
to use them. The most important duty which con- 
fronts a young man at the threshold of "active 
life," is to find out what he can do, and what he 
ought to do ; and then to form and hold the purpose, 
the firm will, steadily, courageously, and patiently 
to do zt, without caring over-much for praise or 
blame. 

Was there ever a teacher whose intercourse with 
students was so free from every form of flattery, — 
who so often compelled a student to revise at the 
behest of modesty his own estimate of his own 
powers, — who was still so helpful in bringing a 
young man to the consciousness of "the best there 
was in him," and giving him confidence and hope 
that he could express this " best " and bring it to 
full fruitage in his life? Dr. Anderson had the art 
of setting young men on a career and of getting 



RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN 239 

older men to work at the thing they were best fitted 
to do. 

He knew well the men in college, their individual 
capacities and powers. Perhaps his was not always 
the finest, most sympathetic insight. A rare gift 
in a retiring student others might be quicker than 
he to discern. There was not in him that excess 
of sympathy with a morbid personality which in a 
teacher sometimes saves a recluse student from 
despair or helps to reveal his own unconscious 
powers to the young artist, but oftener tends to 
weaken the character and destroy the will-power of 
those to whom it offers its enervating companionship. 
But Dr. Anderson made a careful study of the per- 
sonality of every man whom he taught. And his 
estimate of the foot-pounds of working force in his 
man was very close to the facts ; and his j udgment 
as to the lines of effort and the point of applica- 
tion for this force which would insure from it the 
best results, was almost unerring. His advice as 
to these matters was always to be had if it was de- 
sired, and was of greatest value. 

His power in this direction was not limited to 
the undergraduate days of those in whom he was 
interested ; nor was his influence confined to col- 
lege students. 

" I call Martin B. Anderson the great American 
suggester," said the late George P. Marsh to me at 
Rome, in 1879. " There is no man of my acquaint- 
ance who has set so many men upon a useful and 



240 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

honorable career as has he. I should never have 
published anything upon the English language, if 
it had not been for Dr. Anderson," he continued. 
" I had written and delivered a few lectures with 
great hesitation and genuine modesty. He fell in 
with me just after I had delivered them, and in- 
sisted that I ought to make a book of them. I 
scouted the idea. He wrote me a letter to enforce 
his view ; and a few days later we happened to take 
the same train for a ride of some hours, and he 
gave me no peace until I had promised him that I 
would put the lectures into book form. He followed 
me with helpful letters until I had done it ; and it 
was in this way that I became an author. Had it 
not been for Dr. Anderson's friendly advice and 
reiterated insistence, I do not think that I should 
ever have published anything upon the English 
language or literature." The influence of the 
books of our scholarly minister to Italy in awaken- 
ing that fresh interest in the study of English at 
our colleges and universities which has marked the 
last twenty years, links itself with this characteristic 
act of Dr. Anderson. 

" While I had charge of the party of Indian 
warriors, prisoners at the old seaside fort in Flor- 
ida, before the United States had any policy of In- 
dian education," says Capt. R. H. Pratt, Superinten- 
dent of the U. S. Industrial and Training School for 
Indians at Carlisle, Pa., the institution after which 
all our better Indian training schools are mod- 



RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN 241 

eled, " as I was pacing the parade ground one 
afternoon, disheartened at the hopeless outlook for 
my savage prisoners and their children, there sud- 
denly approached me a man over six feet high, 
with a full beard and a head like one of the old 
Greek philosophers. He began to ask me ques- 
tions about these Indian prisoners, their history, their 
past habits of life, their daily routine of prison 
life, their mental and moral characteristics, and the 
effect upon their minds and bodies of this monoto- 
nous prison life, etc., etc. For an hour he asked 
me a steady stream of questions, letting me do 
nothing but answer. Then suddenly he turned on 
his heel and left, without so much as telling me his 
name. ' You're a Yankee, I know by the way 
you ask questions,' I said to myself. The next day 
at the same hour the same thing 'happened again. 
That night I had to lie awake thinking of his ques- 
tions, they seemed to fit the case so closely ; the 
third day, accompanied by his wife, he came with a 
pair of horses to invite us to drive ; and intro- 
ducing himself as the President of Rochester Uni- 
versity, in a drive of two hours he outlined many 
features of the system of training and education 
which we have followed at Carlisle. That drive was 
really the beginning of a comprehensive view for 
me of systematic work in the effort to elevate and 
civilize Indians." l 

Illustrative of this same far-seeing power of sug- 

1 1 quote Captain Pratt from memory, and " for substance." 

V 



242 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

gestion, this gift and habit of encouraging his 
friends, young men and older men, to undertake the 
work for which they were best fitted, is the in- 
fluence of Dr. Anderson in developing, from papers 
read or discussions held in the " Pundit Club," of 
Rochester, important lines of scientific investiga- 
tion and valuable treatises. Is it too much to say 
that the works of the late Lewis Morgan, — " The 
American Beaver,"" Degrees of Consanguinity," etc., 
—so important in their bearing upon biological and 
ethnological science and so well known the world over 
from their influence upon the development of the 
theory of evolution — would not have been written ex- 
cept for the discerning praise with which Dr. Ander- 
son welcomed and discussed the germinal essays, 
read before the Pundit Club, which were afterward 
developed and expanded, under his constant incita- 
tion and critical encouragement, into these books, 
epoch-making in the history of American science ? 
The cases where the encouragement and the 
friendly pressure of Dr. Anderson led men who 
were formerly his students to begin and success- 
fully to prosecute their most important undertak- 
ings, are so numerous that to select any as exan> 
pies would seem unfair to the many of equal 
importance which must be omitted. To meet him, 
or to receive a letter from him, always meant to a 
former student a friendly challenge, a stimulating 
demand, a touch of the teacher's authority add- 
ing piquancy to the friendly question what you 



RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN 243 

were accomplishing, what call to higher achieve- 
ment you had heard, what plan for richer and more 
fruitful living you had formed, or he could help you 
to form. Not merely a wisely suggestive friend, 
but the incarnation of that conscience which de- 
mands of every man later in life the best which his 
youthful ideals showed him as possible to be 
achieved or striven for, was this beloved and vener- 
ated instructor, as his bluff, friendly greeting fell 
upon the ear of the man who ten or twenty years 
before had left his class-room. The man who had 
grown inert, who had lost moral tone and will 
power, or had given up the systematic prosecution 
of the intellectual life, felt himself arraigned by the 
look of those eyes that expected much of him, and 
was often recalled to himself, and incited to a 
higher life by the counselling voice that had rung 
in his ears in the most inspiring calls to duty when 
he was " on the heights " of a noble young man- 
hood, and looked forward on life in that light 
"which is the master-light of all our seeing." 

But when illness, severe and prolonged, had 
interfered with the prosecution of one's lifework, 
whether as an undergraduate or in later years, no 
friend could be more sympathetic and encouraging. 
More than once in his own life, Dr. Anderson had 
known the fettering effects of poor health. And 
many an earnest student whose work was inter- 
rupted by sickness, or painfully limited by chronic 
poor health, has had occasion in college and in later 



244 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

life, to remember with gratitude the encouragement 
received from Dr. Anderson in personal interviews, 
and the calm fervor with which he used to maintain 
that " much of the world's very best work is done, 
and has always been done, by men of feeble health, 
but of strong sense of duty and prevailing power 
of will." He gave as fine an emphasis to this 
truth as does Sidney Lanier in that passage in 
"The English Novel" where he criticises Walt 
Whitman's animalism and blind worship of physical 
strength, apostrophizing the " democrat who is to 
write and read the poetry of the future " ; who "may 
have a mere thread for his biceps, yet he shall be 
strong enough to handle hell ; he shall play ball with 
the earth ; and albeit his stature may be no more 
than a boy's, he shall still be taller than the great 
redwoods of California — his height shall be the 
height of great resolution and love and faith and 
beauty and knowledge and subtle meditation ; his 
head shall be forever among the stars." 

Others have spoken of his "chapel talks " upon 
themes of current public interest, and of his power 
to inspire students by appeals in public addresses 
which enforced his own standards of approval and 
disapproval with irresistible force. Perhaps his 
personal interviews with men, one by one, were 
still more potent in shaping the life of the men 
who owe most to his influence. The readiness 
with which he gave time and thought to the con- 
sideration of the problems that embarrassed a 



RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN 245 

student, often himself seeking an interview in the 
purest friendliness, and because he had reason to 
suppose that the student was harassed by some 
perplexity in the management of his affairs, or in 
his intellectual and moral life, was perpetual evi- 
dence of his interest in young men one by one, 
and of his great goodness of heart. The insight 
which was shown in these interviews, the tonic and 
bracing sympathy given, with its remarkable min- 
gling of intellectual companionship with intellectual 
and moral leadership and authority, made these per- 
sonal interviews a strong, a lifelong influence for 
good. 

In his insistence upon the absolute worth. of all 
good work done, and the inevitable blessing attend- 
ant upon doing honest work, he was as thunder- 
ously strong, as reassuringly vehement as Carlyle. 
He demanded steadily that each day see such work 
done by every student. His high appreciation of 
the cumulative value of those " infinitesimal accre- 
tions " of learning and of mental power which 
each day of honest work brings to a man, helped to 
give to those who studied under his direction a 
conviction which has been like iron in the blood to 
many of them, as their working power has been 
tested, and their faith in good work for its own 
sake tried in the experience of life. 

" Do your work, careless of praise, concerning 
yourself only to be sure that it is sound work, your 
appointed work for this day and this year. Do it 



246 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

faithfully, as 'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye,' 
yet always confidently and hopefully. Do not be 
troubled if you get no praise and plenty of blame, 
provided only the work is good work, and is thor- 
oughly done. Do not be anxious for quickly won 
appreciation, or for promotion. Make yourself 
indispensable wherever your work now lies. Soon 
enough the word will spread, 'there's a man over 
yonder who is doing his work effectively and well ' ; 
and you will be in demand to undertake a larger 
work by the time you have developed and acquired 
the strength you will need to do it ! Do not be 
disheartened by your first failures. Make successes 
of them ! What is walking but a succession of 
falls forward, each one arrested by the advancing 
foot before it becomes a disaster, and thus changed 
into progress ! That which men call success, what 
is it but the last one of a series of failures, each 
conducting toward the desired end — #// failures, had 
not this last step been taken, but now, all suc- 
cesses ! " 

" Strong teaching, but not new," you say. Yet 
all truth that takes hold on living is practically new 
to each new generation of young people as they learn 
how to live. And it is for the lack of a vital faith 
in precisely such teaching that many of the young 
men who leave our colleges fail of high and useful 
living. The massive force of the great teacher 
whom we remember, gave singular emphasis to 
this teaching. We knew that he was waiting and 



RELATIONS WITH YOUNG MEN 247 

must wait for much of the recognized success that 
ought to follow such work as his. The peculiarly 
painful postponement of the giving of much of 
that working material with which he should have 
been supplied early in the history of the college, 
gave a touch of pathos to the grim humor with 
which he said to an old pupil who was undertaking 
the presidency of a college : " Remember, they 
feed college presidents on wind!" But his own 
faith in good work was amply illustrated in his own 
lifework. And this teaching was so emphatically 
expressed, was so lived into the life of the institu- 
tion he guided, that for all who knew him as their 
college president, such thoughts of the value of 
work must always carry with them the echo of 
his voice and the force of his strong personality. 

The well-remembered effects of his patriotic 
spirit and his impassioned, but eminently rational 
oratory, when New York was awakened to the abso- 
lute necessity of war, and of quick, strenuous action, 
in '61 ; his manifest interest in all practical questions 
of statesmanship and reform ; his familiarity with 
the latest phases of scientific thought, a familiarity 
which, like his learning, was encyclopaedic in range 
rather than exhaustive in any single department ; 
his deep ethical convictions ; and above all else the 
lofty spirit of self-sacrifice for the good of others, 
the heart of the gospel of Christ, which gave vital 
force to all his teaching ; all these characteristics, 
when brought to bear upon a student by a college 



248 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

president who believed intensely in the value of 
educating men one by one, who was eagerly deter- 
mined to make the truth tell for good in the life of 
every student, gave to the personal relations of 
Dr. Anderson with the young men whom he 
taught, a determining force, a lasting influence upon 
life, such as has belonged to few teachers in the 
history of our colleges, and has been used by no 
one more conscientiously and unselfishly. The 
central truth, the life of his teaching — not care- 
lessly reiterated, but bursting out in glowing heat 
of concentrated eloquence, on those rare occasions 
when he disclosed to students his heart — was loy- 
alty to the personal Christ, the Divine Saviour in 
whom dwells all wisdom, who is Truth personified, 
whose service is the fullest freedom. 

Merrill E. Gates. 

Amherst, Mass. 




5 o 



« 



< - 

I 

X 

td 

= 



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£P •' 



IV 

AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 

" T STILL seem to hear his authoritative but sym- 
J- pathetic voice saying, ' Gates,' and every 
ounce of power within me immediately responds 
to the call of duty." These were the words of 
Merrill E. Gates, LL. D., the honored and suc- 
cessful president of Amherst College, spoken to 
me a few months ago regarding the influence of 
Dr. Anderson as a factor of inspiration. Hundreds 
of men in this country, in the gospel ministry, in 
the professions of law and medicine, in editorial 
chairs, and in many walks of business life, respond 
to the words of Dr. Gates with a fervent "Amen." 
Dr. Anderson's great thoughts ploughed deep 
furrows in their souls and his impressive person- 
ality left a distinguishing mark upon their intellect- 
ual and moral nature. There are young men, 
some of them not now so young as they would like 
to be, on whose lives and works may be seen this 
image and superscription, " Martin B. Anderson, 
his X mark." We have had few college presidents 
in the United States whose personality was so im- 
pressive, and whose influence was so broad, deep, 
and wholesome, and will be so permanent. One may 

249 



250 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

count on the fingers of one hand all the college 
presidents we have ever had whose influence over 
students was so powerful and personal. The col- 
lege president of to-day, as a rule, is chiefly a busi- 
ness man, with more or less capacity to be at the 
head of a great institution of learning. He may 
be, he often is, a scholar ; he may be, he some- 
times is, a teacher. But he must always be a 
business man, if his work is to be thoroughly 
successful, at the head of a business interest. 
Thus it comes to pass that comparatively few of 
our college presidents are now known as in- 
structors. 

Dr. Anderson represented the noblest class of 
the elect presidents who were, at the same time, 
great administrators and equally great instructors. 
His intellectual forces were as exhaustless as his 
spiritual inspirations were resistless. He was a 
many-sided man ; but on all sides he gave out in- 
spirational power to all who came within his reach. 
He was a great child of nature, possessing alike 
nature's harmonies and contradictions ; but always 
possessing nature's instructions and inspirations. 
It is difficult for any man to make an analysis of 
such a character as was his ; all parts of his nature 
were formed after unique models. He was tremen- 
dous in a sort of feral force as was Jove himself ; 
and on another side of his character he was gentle 
as a mother. He was at times as rugged as a huge 
mountain ; and at other times his nature lay before 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 25 1 

his students as a beautifully undulating plain. At 
times he was swept by emotions as resistless as 
cyclones ; and at other times his whole soul re- 
sponded to desires as gentle as zephyrs. 

But while it is difficult to analyze such a nature 
as his, we may discover with some degree of accu- 
racy the elements of his inspirational power. It is 
easy to see that one important element of that 
power was his stalwart and symmetrical body. 
The writer of this paper entered the University 
of Rochester in the autumn of 1863. At the 
time of his matriculation Dr. Anderson was in 
Europe. The day of his return to Rochester 
was duly heralded, and the morning when he 
should reappear in the college chapel had been 
announced to the students. Never shall I forget 
that morning ! Standing among the seats assigned 
to the freshmen, I watched his stalwart form as 
he entered the chapel, and walked with his mas- 
terful step and imperial port to his place on the 
platform. Seldom does any young man look upon 
a finer specimen of manhood than the students saw 
in Dr. Anderson that morning. Years afterward, 
in making an address before the alumni in that 
same chapel, I described in Dr. Anderson's pres- 
ence this scene witnessed in my freshman days. 
His face flushed " with rosy light," and his eyes 
were suffused with tears as the events of that 
morning were recalled. Students who knew him 
only in his later days knew nothing of the great 



252 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

son of Thor who walked up the college aisle that 
day. He stood then among the students as a 
peak of Mont Blanc rises in the midst of its snow- 
crowned attendants ; rather he was a Matterhorn 
rising in lonely grandeur from the plain on which 
stood men of common mold. He seemed to be the 
survivor of some heroic age of gods and men. 

Dr. Anderson owed much to his ancestors. No 
man was more ready than he to recognize the 
potency of heredity and environment in the forma- 
tion of character. Without permitting them to 
usurp the place which belongs to the supreme 
choice of the individual will, he yet rightly esti- 
mated them as powerful factors in every man's life 
and work. Only in the furnace where many ele- 
ments meet to be blended together in the white 
heat of trial and discipline, are such grand charac- 
ters forged and stamped with the image and super- 
scription of God. He was a veritable Jove among 
men. Men who came into his presence instinct- 
ively felt that they had found their master ; and to 
his authority they bowed, not in slavish subservi- 
ency, but feeling that they honored their own man- 
hood in recognizing his superiority. 

A good body around a great soul is one of the 
noblest gifts of God. The Bible, properly trans- 
lated, nowhere speaks of the body as "vile." It 
everywhere honors, dignifies, and glorifies the body. 
Ever since the Christ tabernacled in human flesh, 
the body has been exalted, and to some degree 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 253 

glorified ; he was humanized that we might be 
divinized. The man who sins against his body sins 
against his God. Etymologically and religiously, 
wholeness and holiness stand closely related ; so prac- 
tically, do also weakness and wickedness. A clear 
mind is the sharp edge of the axe, but a big body is 
the iron back of the axe which drives it home. 
Many men are largely indebted for their success in 
life to their stalwart bodies. It certainly was so 
with Dr. Anderson ; everything about him was gi- 
gantic, body and mind, soul and spirit, arms and fists. 
His arm moved at times like a catapult. His name 
was in harmony with his body. Names are pro- 
phetic oftener than we think. Martin means mar- 
tial, warlike, belonging to Mars ; and in the Gaelic, 
it is probably from Morduin, great chieftain, which 
is from Mor, great, and dtdn, a man. Anderson is 
MacAndrew, son of Andrew, and Andrew means 
strong, manly, robust ; and perhaps even the name 
Brewer has at least a suggestion of strength. 

But let us not unduly exalt mere physical health 
and vigor. Many are born with great souls wedded 
to feeble bodies ; and it is wonderful what an 
amount of work such souls get out of their weak 
bodies. But our noble president did not suffer, 
except in his later days, from these disadvantages ; 
he was richly endowed alike in body and mind ; he 
was a majestic man ; and he will stride forth 
through the chambers of our memory, or be en- 
throned in our hearts forever ! 

w 



254 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

A second factor of inspiration in Dr. Anderson 
was his naturally vigorous and cultured mind. His 
intellectual vigor was developed early in his life. 
He enjoyed the advantage of having a father who 
possessed much more education than was usual 
among men in country towns at that day. His 
father gave his inquiring son his first intellectual 
stimulus and direction. Even at this early stage 
in his career young Anderson showed remarkable 
aptitude for acquiring knowledge. Those who 
were capable of judging correctly as to the boy's 
development saw even then that he would one day 
become a great scholar. In the town in which he 
lived there was a vigorous debating club which 
gave inspiration and direction to his reading and 
thinking. He began at that time the course of 
varied reading which marked all his subsequent 
life. He often emphasized the fact, which was so 
beautifully illustrated in his own mental processes, 
that time must have its legitimate influence in devel- 
oping the intellectual life. The deep foundations of 
his own broad scholarship, whose symmetrical pro- 
portions in after life amazed and delighted his 
friends, were laid in his boyhood in this provincial 
town in Maine. 

His knowledge was so vast and so varied, when 
he was in the full sweep of his official career, that 
he was able successfully to teach any part of the 
college curriculum. He was really a specialist in 
many departments of scientific and philosophical 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 255 

culture ; and he often astonished even specialists 
by the breadth and accuracy of his knowledge in 
their departments. We wish he had left behind 
him more in the way of books ; but the pressing 
duties of raising money and administering the affairs 
of the college made it, as he thought, impossible for 
him to write books. He wrote rather upon the im- 
perishable tablets of human hearts ; he molded and 
controlled the lives of more than one thousand 
young men who sat at his feet. He came into the 
position of college president to make men rather 
than books. The old Hebrew prophet could not 
raise the dead child by sending his staff to be laid 
upon the cold form ; but his own living body, heart 
to heart, must touch the dead boy in order to put 
the breath of life into the cold clay. In like man- 
ner did Dr. Anderson put his own great heart and 
mighty brain into contact with the young men who 
sat at his feet and learned of him. Whoever calls 
the roll of great American college presidents, will 
pronounce the name of Martin B. Anderson, as in 
many respects primus inter pares in this small circle 
of elect men who have honored our colleges and who 
have made their own names immortal. This promi- 
nence will be his whether we take into account his 
thirty-five years of service, or the difficulties he 
met and vanquished, or the fact that he came on 
the scene in a formative period in the history of 
American education ; and it will be his also whether 
we have in mind the vigor and inspiration with 



256 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

which he taught, or the broad fields of thought 
over which he led his sudents, leaving the track 
luminous behind him as he advanced to still nobler 
heights of attainment. He will always have a place 
in the front ranks of this choice company of Amer- 
ican educators. Like the Apostle Paul and the 
great Napoleon, he was master of details, while at the 
same time his broad mind took in the vast sweep of 
thought and effort. In a few hours' conversation 
one often received from him more inspiration and 
information than one could get from days spent in 
a library. No one ever came into contact with him 
without feeling something of his contempt for mean- 
ness, and without experiencing some aspirations for 
nobleness of character and life. He used to say 
that he wanted to teach even the more abstruse 
philosophies and sciences so that the students would 
leave his class-room " red in the face with excite- 
ment " ; and many did so leave his room. They 
there received an impulse whose power they yet 
feel ; they are still conscious of the momentum and 
projectile force of his mighty thoughts. When his 
big arm swung out like a catapult, his great heart 
and brain moved, inspired, and thrilled his pupils. 

Dr. Anderson's manly, brotherly, fatherly, and 
motherly heart was a third factor of his inspiration. 
To some he seemed stern, grim, and severe. He 
had these elements in his nature. He had his days 
of January as well as his days of June. There 
were in his nature flashes of lightning as well as 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 257 

floods of sunshine. He had his times of genuine 
severity as well as times of genial humor ; his 
times of solitude as well as of sociality ; his times 
of storm as well as of calm. But for the subduing 
influence of a higher power he would have made " a 
good hater." This element in the soul is not neces- 
sarily evil ; when held in check by common sense and 
divine grace it makes manly men. Virile vigor is 
a need of the hour ; men, who are every inch men, 
the world wants. If there was thunder in Dr. An- 
derson's voice, there was also tenderness. If there 
was lightning in his eye, there was also love. A 
student who had faced death often on the battle- 
field said he would walk up to the cannon's mouth 
rather than face Dr. Anderson's eye when asking a 
second time for an excuse on account of sickness. 
But that flashing eye might be seen suffused with 
tears of fatherly regard and of Christly love, and 
that voice was often broken with emotion as he 
spoke in the place of prayer, or warned and en- 
treated a wayward student. Never were gentleness 
and strength more beautifully entwined than when 
he took his fragile wife into his manly arms and 
carried her in home or hotel up and downstairs. 
Never were paternal pride and filial love more beau- 
tifully blended than when he gave his aged father 
the place of honor in the pew in God's house or at 
the table in their own home. His courtesy, chiv- 
alry, and tenderness to wife and father are among 
the beautiful pictures of his princely manhood. The 



258 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

same spirit was shown toward his country. He was 
a true American ; there was no foreign mania about 
him. He rejoiced in the history of the republic, 
and he prophesied its grander future. During all 
the dark days of the war no more patriotic heart 
beat in any bosom. He never lost an opportunity 
to impress upon his students their duty to their 
country as well as to their God. His voice rang 
out like a trumpet on behalf of the imperiled re- 
public, for the abolition of slavery, and for the loyal 
support of the government. At one of our anni- 
versary meetings in Music Hall, Boston, he opened 
his address with the words : " This is the first time 
I have stood before a Boston audience since our 
country was born again," words which sent a thrill 
of enthusiasm through the vast assembly held spell- 
bound by his patriotic and eloquent speech. 

Dr. Anderson was as truly unique in his heart- 
power as in his brain-power. Having no children 
of his own, his heart went out to all "his boys," as 
if they were his own sons. They were truly the 
children of his heart. He rejoiced in seeing 
each one wearing the "toga virilis" He gloried 
in their prosperity. He greatly assisted them in 
deciding on their professions, and in securing their 
positions. He kept near the people. His heart 
throbbed, as did the heart of Christ, with sym- 
pathy for the common people. We need warmth, 
life, and love. We need brotherly, fatherly, and 
motherly men, gigantic in intellect, tender in heart, 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 259 

and consecrated in life. Such a man was Martin 
B. Anderson. Such men give the world a marvel- 
ous uplift ; they are an unspeakable benediction to 
their race. 

But the greatest element of his power was his 
robust and roborant religious faith. When he was 
converted he was converted. Then he dedicated 
his body, soul, and spirit, to the good of man and 
to the glory of God. He dethroned self ; he en- 
throned the Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ became his 
Prophet to teach him, his Priest to atone for him, 
and his King to command him. His mother, he 
himself has told us, led him by the hand across the 
fields to the little Baptist church near their home, 
and at the age of eighteen he was baptized into the 
fellowship of that church. How much we owe that 
mother ! In the bottom of his soul he loved the 
interests of the denomination to which he gave the 
enthusiasm of his youth, the strength of his man- 
hood, and the ripe wisdom of his later years. He 
had no apology to make for his religious faith or 
denominational position. He was broad, generous, 
courteous, Christian toward all men, Jew and Gen- 
tile, Romanist and Protestant ; and this he was, 
not in spite of being a leal-hearted Baptist, but just 
because he was such a Baptist. 

Although a great scholar himself, he did not con- 
sider it was his duty to cram his students with 
knowledge. He regarded himself as called rather 
to stimulate their intellects and to arouse their con- 



26o MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

sciences. He wished to teach them to know that 
they possessed tools, and to direct them to their 
true use. The man whom he could not arouse was 
hopelessly sluggish. All over this country his stu- 
dents can be found to-day who bless God for the 
intellectual stimulus and the moral inspiration which 
Dr. Anderson imparted. He knew how to forgive 
boyish follies as well as to repress serious forms of 
disobedience. He was thoroughly human in his 
struggles and sympathies while he inspired all to 
be more divine in their aspirations and attainments. 
Some of his sermons on the days of prayer for 
colleges will go with his students through life. He 
on these occasions stirred them to the very bot- 
toms of their souls ; he made their lives take hold 
on eternity. He gave to all of them noble inspi- 
ration, practical encouragement, and mighty moral 
impulsion ; he held before them a glorious ideal of 
consecrated manhood ; and he made them look into 
eternity for the highest motives toward true success 
in life. 

He judged himself and his work by the Divine 
standard ; and so the great secret of his life was 
his faith in the Son of God. It may be said of 
him, as it is said of Moses in the eleventh chapter 
of Hebrews, the honor roll of faith's heroes and 
heroines, " He endured, as seeing him who is in- 
visible." This is the deep secret of Dr. Ander- 
son's life ; this is the true source of his power. No 
man can ever attain to the highest possibilities that 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 26 1 

are within him whose life does not take hold on 
eternity. No man can do the impossible unless 
he can see the invisible. Character gives power. 
It is the man behind the words who makes the 
words winged, mighty, and almost divine. The 
man who takes hold on God takes hold on men. 
The highest moral heroism is impossible except as 
the result of this divine fellowship. George Eliot 
would have crowned her name with immortal glory 
had her life in her maturer years swept upward to 
God's throne and heart. Only as men live in the light 
of eternity do they most gloriously illumine their 
pathway in time. Dr. Anderson strove, to use an ex- 
pression which he often repeated, "to live over again 
the life of the Lord Jesus." He constantly recog- 
nized the fact that the secret of all noble living is 
self-sacrifice. Toward the close of his public life 
especially did he emphasize the words of another 
great soul, "always bearing about in the body the 
dying of the Lord Jesus." These words, which he 
often quoted with trembling voice, unconsciously 
incarnated the spirit of his own life. He strove to 
imitate the example of Christ, " who came to put 
away sin by the sacrifice of himself." He knew 
nothing, even to the very last, of the weakness 
which Milton calls " that last infirmity of noble 
minds." In the writer's last interview with him as 
he was on his way to Florida to die, he spoke of 
President Hill in words of much appreciation, ad- 
miration, and affection. He declared it to be his 



MARTIN B, ANDERSON 

intention to assist him in raising money for 
the University, and in doing other work on its 
behalf so long as God would permit him to live. 
Never was a greater truth taught the world than 
when our Lord said : M He that findeth his lite 
shall lose it ; and he that loseth his lite tor my sake 
shall rind it." We have here the statement of a 
law universal as gravitation, and eternal as God. 
There is no nobler motto for men or angels than 
that of the Prince of Wales, "Ich dien" — I serve. 
The Prince of heaven came serving — came not be- 
ing ministered unto but ministering unto oth< 
In this respect Dr. Anderson " lived over again the 
of the Lord Jesus." The words of Dr. W, C. 
Wilkinson, one of the most honored alumni of 
Rochester, whether spoken of Dr. Anderson or 
not. express the thought of all who knew Dr. An- 
derson, and especially the thought of all his stu- 
dents : 

Ideal Christian, teacher, master, man. 
Severely sweet, a gracious Puritan, 

Beyond my praise to-day. beyond their blame, 
lie spurs me yet with his remembered name. 

Dr. Anderson's work will abide. New England 
gained her great place in this republic because of 
the attention which she gave to education. The 
people who first came into New England contained 
an unusually large proportion of English univei 
men ; this was especially true of the minis: 



AS A FACTOR OF INSPIRATION 263 

These educated ministers, although dead, still speak 
and act ; they created the mold into which their 
descendants have been run ; they have made New 
England felt throughout America and the world. 
When these university-bred men died, there was a 
noble body of men bred in American colleges ready 
to take their places. The great colleges founded 
in that early day have been the bulwarks of educa- 
tion, of liberty, and of religion. The man who 
founds by money or brains a great university, which 
remains loyal to truth and God, does more to bless 
men and to honor God than man or angel can esti- 
mate. He founds the most enduring institution 
this side of God's throne. Oxford and Cambridge 
have outlived tremendous national cataclysms. They 
are more enduring than the British throne. It is 
conceivable that a republic may take the place one 
day of the British monarchy ; but amid the crash 
of thrones and dynasties, should this change come, 
these great universities will stand unmoved. Em- 
pires may rise and fall ; dynasties change and decay ; 
but these institutions of learning shall be like 
mighty lighthouses resting on the eternal rock, and 
sending out the light of science and religion, 
blended into one flame, to illumine the world and 
to glorify God. 

Dr. Anderson often spoke as if he were living in 
vain and toiling for naught. He often experienced 
the loneliness peculiar to true genius. His restless 
activity grew weary with necessary delays and in- 



264 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

evitable limitations in realizing his great plans. 
Often his words were tinged with deep sadness, 
but we can estimate better than he could the 
breadth, height, and perpetuity of his work. It 
thus comes to pass that the end of his life may be 
contemplated without sorrow. It was a great life, 
nobly lived and triumphantly ended. The sun 
which had so resplendently shone was not eclipsed 
at noonday ; it set at evening time, making the 
western sky radiant with its crimson and gold. 
As a shock of corn in its season, so was this im- 
perial man gathered. A glorious combatant fought 
the good fight ; a stalwart runner finished the 
course ; a loving and loyal disciple kept the faith ; 
and a prince of royal blood has received the crown. 
In all these things, there is cause not for sorrow, 
but joy ; not for grief, but for gladness. We may 
think of him not to wail out a miserere, but to chant 
a Te Deum. " Esto ftdelis usque ad mortem, et tibi 
dabo coronam vitce," is the exhortation and promise 
of the enthroned Redeemer. Dr. Anderson has 
received the victor's triple crown — crown of life, of 
righteousness, and of glory. Let us who are sol- 
diers still militant, learn inspiring lessons from the 
life of our beloved commander now triumphant. 

Robert Stuart MacArthur. 

New York. 



V 



AS A DENOMINATIONAL FORCE 

PRESIDENT ANDERSON was not forty-five 
years old when he dismissed me with my 
diploma ; and I continue to think of him as a young 
and admirable educator, facing a distinguished 
future. This conception of him will qualify and 
interpret what I have now to say of him. 

He was a man of remarkable force, created for 
power and influence, predestined to kinghood. 
There are men who seem to have reserved power 
that never expresses itself. President Anderson's 
abundant reserved power was constantly passing 
into revealed and developed power. He was always 
in action,. always at the front, always dealing mighty 
blows. He never disappointed expectation. When 
great occasions came, it was seen that he was equal 
to them. At his funeral, President Strong named 
him " the foremost citizen of Rochester." It was 
in him to be foremost, for the reason that he 
was essential energy, power in exercise, a man of 
affairs who brought things to pass. In class-room or 
drawing room, political assembly or church, in all 
places, even his silent presence was felt. To be 
where he was, was to be consciously in an atmos- 

x . 26s 



266 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

phere of power. One was thrilled as by a spiritual 
electricity. 

His force was not all of one kind ; it was multi- 
form. Physically, he was a son of Anak. His 
gestures were mighty ; his voice had the firmness 
of adamant ; the glances of his eyes were like bars 
of steel. 

He was intellectually forceful. There is an in- 
tellect that explores and discovers and acquires, 
and seems thus to accomplish its mission. There 
is an intellect that delights in its own perfection, a 
self-complacent intellect, happy that it has attained 
to fine culture, sometimes allowing itself to be 
admired of men. There is an intellect that shines 
and illuminates, that vitalizes and invigorates, that 
yields itself instinctively to high service. It cannot 
be a light under a bushel, consuming ecstatically 
in its own excess of radiance ; its proper place is on 
the lamp-stand. President Anderson's intellect was 
of this sort. It was a light that shone out into 
darkness and dissipated it. It was the intellect of 
the teacher, of the apostle, of the master. The 
light that was in him was light for men. 

In all the elements of moral character, in con- 
science and affections and will, Dr. Anderson was 
forceful. His imperial conscience not only governed 
his own life ; it also subdued other lives to its au- 
thority. In his presence, the wrong-doer stood self- 
condemned. There was little need that he should 
speak words of rebuke ; he was himself a rebuke. 



AS A DENOMINATIONAL FORCE 267 

Of the strength of his affections and of the king- 
liness of his will, all who knew him had knowledge. 
He could say with Wisdom, " My delight was with 
the sons of men." His superb will, which controlled 
and directed all his powers, was suffused with ten- 
derness. His moral indignations were tempered by 
a divine sympathy and compassion. Like David, 
he was a man of war who sang songs of salvation as 
he fought. He was a Captain Great-Heart, whom 
men could honor and women trust. 

I have been trying to give expression to the con- 
ception of President Anderson as multiform force, 
which is with me the constant and ruling one. As 
thinker, believer, teacher, friend, he was always 
powerful. He was an Agamemnon, king of men. 
He was a much-contriving, much-achieving, much- 
enduring Ulysses. 

Imagine this man established in the heart of a 
great Christian denomination. Being the man that 
he is, the denomination will thrill and throb with his 
might. He will be wise and fruitful of suggestion ; 
but beyond and above all that, he will be powerful 
and influential. He will go to the front, and the 
people will follow him. His pupils often received 
from him the exhortation : " Create a soul under the 
ribs of death ! " If he could not do precisely that, 
it was in him to develop a larger and stronger soul 
under the ribs of life. In the inspiration which he 
brought, the denomination realized more fully its 
own power, and honored him who brought it. 



268 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

President Anderson was a denominational force 
for the reason that he was loyal in heart and 
life to the denominational faith. His loyalty was 
invigorated, I am sure, by the philosophy of religion 
in which he had thoroughly schooled himself. He 
was able to join without embarrassment in the ap- 
peal of Protestantism to the law and the testimony ; 
and it was his constant Protestantism that held him 
to the Baptist foundation. He did not lay claim to 
the nicest and most exact scholarship in the orig- 
inal languages of the sacred Scriptures, nor did he 
put himself forward as an expert in theology and ec- 
clesiology. With all his large learning, omniscience 
was not his foible. Early in life he had faced the 
question of personal religion, and in due time had 
returned his answer. His answer was intelligent ; 
his faith was reasoned and reasonable. He found 
the Bible on his hands, an ancient and unique book, 
which the church affirmed to be divinely inspired 
and authoritative. It was not in him to accept 
without examination even this solemn and ancient 
affirmation of the church. He required of the 
Bible that it give an account of itself. His investi- 
gation was practical and thorough, with the result 
that the Bible not only contains, but also in a true 
sense is, the word of God. This faith of his in the 
Bible continued unshaken to the end. It was a 
wide and wise faith, a faith that would fearlessly 
give utmost scope to the keenest and most adven- 
turous scholarship, a faith that welcomed light and 



AS A DENOMINATIONAL FORCE 269 

accepted instruction. His attitude toward what 
goes by the name of higher criticism was at once 
hospitable and courageous. Honest and competent 
explorers would make valuable discoveries ; sappers 
and miners would have their labor for their pains. 
He had found the divine Bible ; better than that, 
the divine Bible had found him. Why should he 
be afraid ? His loyalty to the Bible was of such 
nature that it proffered opportunity for increasing 
knowledge of it ; and no keenest and brightest stu- 
dent ever felt for a moment that the Bible of his 
revered and majestic teacher was a fetich, or that 
his faith in it was of such a sort as to provoke in- 
telligent men to resentment and skepticism. Mean- 
while those who knew him most intimately, and 
were in the secret of his spiritual life, were pro- 
foundly impressed that the Bible was his stay and 
comfort in hours of conflict and darkness. He 
drank from it as from a brook by the way, and was 
refreshed. It brought strength to his character and 
inspiration to his life. 

The preciousness of the Bible for Dr. Anderson 
was due chiefly to the fact that it made him ac- 
quainted with Jesus Christ. " The testimony of 
Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy." The entire Bible 
was radiant with the light which streamed from the 
face of the Son of Man, whom he loved as his 
Saviour, obeyed as his King, adored as his God. 
His devotion to Christ found twofold expression. 
He sought earnestly personal transformation into 



270 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

his likeness, and he labored to build up his king- 
dom on the earth. This twofold service was sacri- 
ficial : he shrank not from the hard embrace of the 
cross. He suffered with his Lord, that he might 
reign with him. In the breast of the valiant sol- 
dier there beat a loving heart, and he shed sweet- 
ness and light as he pursued his majestic journey. 

If the Bible made Christ known to him, Christ 
in his turn made the Bible sacred and commanding. 
It was Christ who spoke to him out of the Bible, 
and he bowed both to the voice and to him who 
uttered it. He could not dissociate obedience 
to Christ from loyalty to the word. The cry of 
"back from the Bible to Christ" never rose from 
his lips. What God had joined together he did not 
dare put asunder. 

His intelligent recognition of the authority of 
Christ and of the Bible made and kept him a Bap- 
tist. Acknowledging the rights of reason and con- 
science, he never allowed them to invade the juris- 
diction of the written and of the living word. 
Reverencing the church as the body of Christ, he 
never allowed it to invade the function of its divine 
Head. Accepting the challenge to give a reason 
for his faith, he never was beguiled into rationalistic 
dogmatism. Receiving with meekness baptism and 
the holy supper, he resisted every- sacramentarian 
assumption. The Christ whom he served is Lord of 
all the ages, announcing by his own lips and the lips 
of his apostles the essentials of doctrine and ritual 



AS A DENOMINATIONAL FORCE 27 1 

for all time ; and he conceded to neither congrega- 
tion nor council the right of radical revision and 
change. The simple faith in which this wise and 
strong man bowed before the majesty of Christ and 
of the Bible was wonderful to behold. 

But one could not know him long and well 
without discovering that his simple faith as a 
Baptist was reinforced by all that he had gained 
from wide reading, from profound philosophical 
and ethical study, and from intimate compan- 
ionship with Christ in all the ways of holy liv- 
ing. The roots of his denominational faith went 
down into the nature of things. So it came to 
pass that he could hold up his head as a Baptist 
among thinkers and scholars and saints. He was 
too good a Baptist to denounce any man for exercis- 
ing intelligently and honorably his right of private 
judgment. His denominational faith was catholic 
and generous, and he-maintained it in a catholic and 
generous spirit. He believed in the holy catholic 
church, in the one spiritual body of Christ discov- 
erable in churches of all names, even in many elect 
souls outside of all churches, and he rejoiced in the 
fellowship of all saints. None the less, as a man 
strenuously loyal to his convictions of truth and 
duty, he lived and died a Baptist. Thus did he 
uphold the majesty and sacredness of truth, and 
thus did he contribute to the ultimate unity of the 
church of Christ. 

Dr. Anderson's interest in those who were of his 



272 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

own denomination was constant and hearty. He 
had studied in the school of the prophets, but 
had not been ordained. His special study drew 
him toward ministers, and helped him to under- 
stand them ; his remaining outside of the minis- 
terial and pastoral office kept him in sympathetic 
touch with laymen. The ministers knew that he 
comprehended the spirit and significance of their 
work ; the laymen did not think him precluded by 
ministerial limitations from entering into their 
thought and life. Barriers thus on either side being 
prevented, he yielded to his fraternal impulses, and 
gained abundant entrance into the fellowship and 
confidence of his brethren. Business men and men 
in the professions felt that he had much in com- 
mon with them, and valued both his companion- 
ship and his counsel. They, in their turn, inter- 
ested themselves in his work, and contributed gen- 
erously to its support. When his former pupils 
entered upon business or professional life, he was 
forward with words of encouragement, was ready 
with wise suggestions in emergencies, and sought 
to promote those who were worthy to positions of 
responsibility and honor. He believed in the 
ability of young men for high achievement, and 
cautioned them against timid postponement of 
substantial and large success. 

Outside of the class-room, he received his pupils 
upon the footing of friends, respecting their man- 
hood and companying with them as brethren. He 



AS A DENOMINATIONAL FORCE 273 

knew human nature, abhorred superstitions and 
whims, and interpreted character and conduct in the 
light of fundamental principles. He discriminated 
between faults and sins, and was careful not to ad- 
minister reproof when only advice was needed. 
What wonder that his pupils loved and revered 
him ? He was not a martinet ; he was a sage. 

His interest in ministers was warm and helpful. 
He respected the sacredness of their office, and 
honored them for their work. He often spoke of 
the " responsibility and influence of those to whom 
had been assigned the cure of souls" For his own 
pastor he always showed a tender and intelligent 
regard. If he was disheartened, he encouraged 
him. If he was perplexed by problems of thought 
or administration, he gave him wise counsel. He 
sought always to promote his influence in the congre- 
gation and in the community. When his own pupils 
became ministers, he kept a loving and watchful 
eye upon them. • If their fields were obscure and 
difficult, he incited them to patience and courage. 
If they were called to important positions, he 
blended sagacious counsel Avith hearty congratula- 
tions. Sometimes when he thought they had done 
well, he surprised them by what they modestly im- 
agined a premature bestowal of the honors which 
colleges and universities are wont to distribute 
among the children of men. 

President Anderson was often called to the pul- 
pit. He preached in the college chapel on the ap- 



274 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

pointed days of prayer for colleges and in times of 
special religious interest. He frequently officiated 
for the Rochester pastors of different communions. 
He was in demand for the dedication of meeting- 
houses, and was summoned to the front on great 
denominational occasions. His sermons to the 
students, always marked by seriousness, often rose 
into awful solemnity. He not only made powerful 
appeal to the conscience, but also showed inti- 
mate knowledge of the human mind and heart. 
Men listened to him and thought of the day of 
judgment. He spent little time upon the incidents 
of his text. All mere forms of truth, sometimes 
even the historic, are provisional and economic ; and 
he refused to spend undue time and strength upon 
them. He seized the principle embodied in the 
form, and used it as a master-key for the opening 
of all locks. Sometimes he was extremely bold in 
the application of the principle he had in hand. 
He was preaching one Sunday in a Presbyterian 
church in Rochester, and he quite startled me by 
saying that in the light of the truth under discus- 
sion certain Presbyterian beliefs and usages seemed 
to be aside from the mark. But Dr. Roswell D. 
Hitchcock, in a sermon preached not long before 
at the commencement of the seminary, had with 
equal boldness traversed Baptist beliefs and usages. 
I am not startled now by such boldness, nor do I 
count it discourtesy. Honorable men enjoy honest 
speech. 



AS A DENOMINATIONAL FORCE 275 

Unstudious preachers often prattle about the 
simplicity of the teachings of our Lord, and im- 
agine that in the mouthing of their shallow ser- 
monettes they follow in the steps of him who spake 
as never man spake. President Anderson would 
have taught them that the simplest saying of our 
Lord has unfathomable depths, and that the true 
simplicity is acquired only by the most laborious 
study and the profoundest thinking. 

I have failed of my purpose in what I have 
written if many added words are needed to set 
forth President Anderson's influence as a man. 
What must be the influence of a son of i\dam who 
is embodied force, who is sincere to the core of his 
being, who has educated to the utmost his naturally 
powerful faculties, who loves God and his neighbor, 
who realizes that he was sent into the world for 
high and sacred ends, and whose whole life is con- 
spicuously sacrificial ? If this question is rightly 
answered, the influence as a man of the great col- 
lege president will be abundantly disclosed. 

Cephas B. Crane. 

Concord, N. H. 



VI 



AS A PUBLIC MAN 



IN writing of Dr. Anderson as a public man, I 
can give only impressions as to his public 
capacity rather than pass judgment on his public 
acts. My relations with him, though in a sense 
intimate, had neither the extent nor continuity 
necessary to a full and authoritative presentation of 
a great career. 

Dr. Anderson was a public man in a peculiar sense. 
Except that of a domestic character remarkably 
sweet and beautiful, he may be said to have had no 
private life. After his connection with the univer- 
sity became fixed and permanent, he had no busi- 
ness, no interests, no aspirations that were not of a 
public character. His sole purpose, to an extent 
hardly to be paralleled in any other life of our time, 
was the advancement of the general welfare through 
the elevation of American character, the potency 
of a higher manhood, and the evolution of a better 
civilization. 

These results he sought to promote, not by the 

formulation of specific social or political theories, 

or the application of particular political methods, 

but by persistent, unselfish efforts to elevate indi- 

276 



AS A PUBLIC MAN 277 

vidual motive, and inspire the application of indi- 
vidual powers to the promotion of the noblest pub- 
lic aim. It is a public career almost unique in our 
American life. 

He was a politician who had little faith in party 
principles unless incarnated in high-minded men : 
a partisan who deemed the distribution of the 
spoils of office neither essential to, nor promotive 
of, the formulation and enactment of wise laws ; a 
publicist whose work concerned the common wel- 
fare rather than upheld a specific theory ; an econo- 
mist not in entire harmony with the views of any 
party ; a reformer who believed prevention better 
than cure ; a philanthropist who sought to inspire 
the strong to deal justly and wisely rather than 
shield the weak from woe ; a Christian who gave 
more thought to the betterment of earthly condi- 
tions than to the anticipation of heavenly delights. 

As a consequence, he left no political disquisi- 
tions likely to be of permanent value ; there is no 
Andersonian clique or following in politics or 
economics ; no Andersonian fad ; no reform which 
counts him among its tutelary saints. There is 
only an Andersonian ideal of manhood, of public 
duty, and of patriotic purpose. He originated no 
political method or economic theory, and his teach- 
ing was not specially promotive of the views of any 
party. He was not the recognized champion of 
any economic theory or social polity. He thought 
less of the relation of the State to the individual 

Y 



278 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

than of the duty of the individual to the State. 
His public life is less notable for what he achieved 
in public station, than for the ideal of public duty 
which he impressed on those coming within the 
scope of his influence — the impulse with which he 
inspired others to use their powers, in whatever 
relation of life, for the betterment of collective 
conditions. 

As an educator, a writer, a thinker, and a doer, 
Dr. Anderson was essentially and almost wholly a 
public man. Even as a Christian and sectary, his 
chief motive was always the public welfare. As a 
teacher, his purpose was to inspire men to promote 
the general good. He stimulated the desire to suc- 
ceed because he recognized, as few men ever have, 
that the general good was best promoted by indi- 
vidual success. Individual achievement was the 
lever by which he looked to see the world lifted up, 
wrong righted, conditions bettered. His ideal of 
manhood was set forth in the phrase which was so 
frequently on his lips, " One who causes things to 
come to pass." They might be great events or 
small ones ; if they were only events commensurate 
with the capacity of the indvidual, he was content. 
He did not expect the saints to inherit the earth 
without fighting for it, and so would train them to 
fight, in order that they might not lose the divine 
bequest. He counted the old Adam the most 
essential element of the new man. As with fruits 
the best results are obtained by grafting the im- 



AS A PUBLIC MAN 279 

proved sorts on the more vigorous stocks, so with 
man he regarded vigor, will, determination, the sine 
qua non of collective betterment. 

Dr. Anderson has often been termed a worshiper 
of success ; and in a sense he was. His admira- 
tion for the man who overcame difficulties, and 
accomplished what others failed to do, amounted 
almost to reverence. He was Carlylean in his love 
of potentiality and his hate of weakness ; but 
unlike Carlyle, he did not allow his love of power 
to blind his eyes to evil, nor waste his own strength 
in cursing the shortcomings of the weak. He 
delighted in the strong — the Samson who pulled 
down a temple on his own head ; the Cromwell who 
overthrew a dynasty ; the Caesar who founded an 
empire ; the inventor who opened a new field of 
human activity ; the statesman who foiled a cabal ; 
or the soldier who conquered his enemy. 

His intense conviction that power to accomplish 
results is the first essential of success, led him 
sometimes to express a contempt for weakness 
which was almost brutal. " You can chain a tor- 
rent and make it work," one of his pupils once said 
in an address to which he listened, " but a puddle is 
a hopeless thing." "Worse than that," replied Dr. 
Anderson, in commenting on this remark. " The 
torrent may overwhelm and kill a hundred ; but the 
puddle breeds disease that may destroy millions. 
Strength may accomplish either good or bad 
results ; weakness is potent only for evil." 



28o MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

In accordance with this view he regarded true 
civilization as only a graft of better purpose, which 
culture fixes on savage stamina, and deplored the 
weakness that resulted from the complex character 
of modern life. His view of government and citi- 
zenship was that the citizen should shape the gov- 
ernment and make it a means for the promotion of 
his best impulses, not so much through the restraint 
of evil tendency in others, as by multiplying and 
perfecting the means of accomplishing good. He 
had little sympathy with that theory of government 
which makes the collective power merely a truss 
for individual infirmity. " The best reform," he 
once said, " is that which raises men who do not 
need to be reformed." To his mind the unit of 
force, in all moral, social, and political progress, 
was always the individual. 

He did not like the study of collective tenden- 
cies and rarely speculated at much length, perhaps 
never profoundly, in regard to them. In consider- 
ing historical events, he was led by this very incli- 
nation to magnify the influence of certain individu- 
als upon specific epochs. He underestimated the 
masses, or rather failed to note that the great leader 
was but the index-finger of the time in which he 
lived. There was one exception to this : in treating 
of the establishment of the American Republic, he 
delighted especially in showing that it was a pro- 
duct of the general conditions of our colonial life. 
The idea of attributing to the select few among 



AS A PUBLIC MAN 28 1 

"the fathers" the excellencies of the American 
system was particularly abhorrent to him, and every 
student will remember with what a relish he stripped 
the feathers of pretence from some of them. 

His knowledge of political events, and of the 
machinations by which specific political results 
were effected, was varied and profound. His ad- 
miration for the individual power to " cause things 
to come to pass," gave him special delight in fol- 
lowing the course of diplomacy and intrigue which 
form the woof of political life. He loved to trace 
the dark, red figures in the web of history, and note 
the skill with which this hand or that threw the 
shuttle which produced them. Of the warp, the 
dull, dark filaments, the rise and fall of which hold 
the bright threads in place, and give value to the 
figures which they form, he was inclined to be neg- 
lectful ; or rather, it might be said, he regarded 
them as controlled and manipulated by the hands 
that traced the pattern. He counted the excesses 
of the French Revolution as direct results of the 
false theories of the French philosophers of the 
eighteenth century ; he did not give much thought 
to the influences which caused those philosophers 
to err. 

The same tendencies made him love a strong 
people and despise a weak one. As he counted it 
the first duty of man to be strong that he might 
achieve, he regarded it as the prime essential of 
nationality to be powerful. He gloried in the 



282 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

strength of England, and was intensely interested 
in the unification of Germany, the evolution of the 
nineteenth century empire, which he attributed 
more to Bismarck than to the instrumentalities 
which had been forged ready to his hand. He 
thought Bismarck the one man who had been able 
to reverse the tendencies of the present and seat 
the past firmly in the saddle of power. He once 
termed this marvel of modern empire building 
" the most interesting study in history." 

On the other hand, the decadence of Italy and 
Spain depressed him. He could not understand 
weakness, and had no love for historical morbid 
anatomy. He studied some phases of modern Ital- 
ian life with great assiduity, notably the metayer 
system, which he hoped might be valuable in 
ameliorating our Southern conditions. His conclu- 
sions were not reliable, because he to a great extent 
ignored the most essential factor, the character of 
the laborer. 

He was an intense American, not because he 
himself was an American, nor from any desire to 
win popular approval, but from a profound convic- 
tion that American civilization is the outcome of 
the world's best life, and is destined to produce the 
highest type, as it has already evolved the highest 
average of manhood. To attain this end, collective 
power to resist deterioration resulting from the un- 
restrained influx of debased elements was to his 
mind the prime essential. 



AS A PUBUC MAN 283 

The Hamiltonian theory of our government nat- 
urally appealed with peculiar force to a man of such 
ideals ; and though his fear of harmful results from 
the restraint of individual tendencies inclined him 
strongly to the economic theories of Adam Smith, 
his invincible bias toward desirable achievement led 
him to admit the practical advantages of a protec- 
tive system. 

This writer had not the same opportunity to know 
his economic views as many others enjoyed. What 
he heard of them as a student, he probably but 
half comprehended and may not correctly recall. 
They certainly did not make so deep an impression 
on his mind as the views of his instructor upon 
some other subjects. During the years when they 
met on familiar terms, it was not a predominate 
issue, and came to the surface in our intercourse 
only incidentally. The labor problem, that is, the 
relation of wages to the profits of production, had 
not then assumed such importance or perhaps had 
not been so clearly defined ; and protection meant 
at that time the establishment of varied industries 
rather than the maintenance of a higher rate of 
wages or the profitable engagement of the unem- 
ployed. 

Dr. Anderson's mind was assertive and illustra- 
tive rather than demonstrative. He was careless 
of premises and authority, and seldom anxious to 
mark the path by which he arrived at conclusions. 
Facts, illustrations, aphorisms, came bursting from 



284 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

his lips with great gaps of unformulated sequence 
between, which the listener was expected to supply. 
Deduction, to his mind, was not a laborious creep- 
ing from point to point like the progress of a centi- 
pede, but a flight from crest to crest like the eagle's. 
One saw the progress, perhaps wondered at it, but 
rarely doubted the rectitude of his flight. The 
listener may have missed the path himself and won- 
dered whither it really led, but he never questioned 
that Dr. Anderson had reached the landmarks he 
pointed out by earnest endeavor and sincere re- 
search. One might not perceive the play of mus- 
cle from which it resulted, but the force of his 
blow was indubitable. 

His conversation, like his public speech, was 
aphoristic in a degree, very remarkable with one 
little given to the play of wit. Metaphor for the 
sake of metaphor had little charm for him ; but 
metaphor as a club to drive home ideas, he used 
with a ponderous quaintness which showed the 
keen sense of humor which was one of the basic 
elements of his power. His aphorisms were always 
arguments. Many have expressed sorrow that his 
literary work was not more voluminous and elab- 
orate. He himself was sometimes inclined to self- 
reproach for not having devoted what he termed 
his leisure to some particular topic. Those who 
knew him best will regret much more deeply that 
the things he said were not more carefully pre- 
served. Few men ever had the power which he pos- 



AS A PUBLIC MAN 285 

sessed to put a man, a theory, a book, a system of phi- 
losophy, or an age into a sentence. These sentences 
he scattered with a lavish and careless profusion 
which testified how infinitely he was above the 
mere phrasemonger whom he despised. They were 
the crystals which a mind of rare power distilled 
from a life of varied research. Their loss is irrep- 
arable. They were the true essence of the man. 

Every student has a few of these diamonds 
stored in his memory ; the greater part, perhaps 
the better part, came without previous intentment, 
fell before swine, and were lost. Small as was my 
opportunity, I blame myself for the many I have 
forgotten. 

" Mazzini," he once said, " was a submerged vol- 
cano — a mass of red-hot liberalism which the ocean 
of reactionary conservatism could not put out." 

Speaking of that class of men, mere students 
who absorb the thoughts of others without adding 
anything to the store of knowledge, he said : " They 
are mere sponges, of course, but they have their 
place, especially in educational work ; they have 
only to be squeezed to give out what they have ab- 
sorbed, uncolored by any thought of their own." 

Referring to Sir John Lawrence, he said : 

" India is the dead lion from whose decaying car- 
cass England gathers honey. A century of mis- 
rule and oppression has given her an array of 
heroes, statesmen, reformers, hardly to be matched, 
with Jan Larens at their head." 



286 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

Alluding to the effect of the English govern- 
ment upon the character of the English people, he 
said : 

" After all, the power and prosperity of England 
depend chiefly on the irrepressible conflict that ex- 
ists between the Englishman and the British con- 
stitution ; the hope of being a Lord Somebody has 
made men of millions of her nobodies." 

Despite his love of liberty and invincible hatred 
of oppression, Dr. Anderson was not in full sym- 
pathy with the abolition movement. This, no 
doubt, arose from two reasons, first his instinctive 
love of law, and second a not unreasonable appre- 
hension as to the results of a general emancipation 
of the slaves. There was always a flavor of law- 
lessness about the abolition movement which was 
greatly magnified by the declarations of some of 
its leaders. The idea of denominating the Consti- 
tution of the United States " a league with hell," 
stirred every fibre of his nature to protest. Every 
one will remember what a terrible thumping the 
old Bible got whenever he had occasion to allude to 
it in chapel. He hailed the organization of the 
Republican party with especial pleasure, because it 
seemed to be a substitution of legitimate for half- 
legitimate methods of securing the liberation of the 
slaves. 

The writer had especial reason to note his posi- 
tion upon this subject. In the campaign of i860, 
a marching club of what were known as " Wide 



r. 
z 

- 

- 
o 
w 

n 




AS A PUBLIC MAN 287 

Awakes" was organized, of which he was elected 
captain, and R. M. Tuttle, of the class of '62, the 
secretary. The organization was effected during 
the absence of the president, but wholly without 
any thought of awakening his displeasure. The 
first knowledge of that came from his appearance 
in the basement of the old hotel which was then 
the college building, which we had appropriated as 
a drill-room. It is doubtful if any of us who saw 
him then will ever forget the angry sternness of 
his countenance as he asked what was the meaning 
of our proceedings. Some attempt at explanation 
was made ; but it was far from being a brilliant 
success. The captain and secretary underwent not 
a bad quarter of an hour, but something like a cen- 
tury of moral pulverization at his hands, and had 
only begun the process of re-collecting the frag- 
ments of self -hood, when the next morning he gave 
an hour of the most brilliant disquisition upon the 
political situation and the danger that might arise 
from the popular agitation of the delicate and dan- 
gerous questions that had swallowed up all other 
issues. It was the first serious forecast to which 
any of us had listened of the conflict which within 
a few months was to bring upon the nation a deluge 
of blood. This lecture and the remarks he made 
upon the execution of John Brown, a year before, 
were among the broadest and most impressive ad- 
dresses the writer has ever heard. Their character 
was so grave, apprehensive, and conservative as to 



288 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

make the impassioned words that fell from his lips 
when the firing on Fort Sumter first became 
known, almost a surprise. Few who heard the 
latter will ever forget the intensity and force with 
which he applied to the nation in its crucial hour 
the injunction of Jehovah to the leader of his peo- 
ple : " Be ye strong and very courageous." Dwell- 
ing lightly enough upon the woes of war, his whole 
heart seemed overwhelmed with apprehension, lest 
the American people should fail in nerve, in resolu- 
tion, in fortitude. Speaking of that period some 
years afterward, he said : " I sometimes think that 
with my Scotch blood I inherited a tinge of that 
second sight, which is after all only intensity of 
thought on a specific subject. For a week or so I was 
as one dazed ; I cannot remember anything that hap- 
pened. I thought I must stand by the University, 
then in a peculiar strait, while all the time it seemed 
as if the country was calling me to do something. 
I seemed to see the whole panorama of the long 
war, the nation's agony, and especially the danger 
to civilization which the rupture of the republic 
would bring about. I could think of nothing but 
the long list of national failures, blighted peoples, 
shattered powers, and tremble lest another name 
should be added to it. It was only when I saw 
how the people answered to the call for troops and 
realized that a new spirit, was abroad in the land 
that I began to recover my usual poise of mind. 
Every now and then, some one tells me of some- 



AS A PUBLIC MAN 289 

thing that happened those weeks, but I only dimly 
recall it." 

He threw himself into the work of raising troops 
with that energy and singleness of purpose which 
were characteristic of him. Taking no official 
position, still keeping his hand upon the university, 
his voice was heard in every portion of the State, 
and in all the work of organization he is said to 
have been a tireless worker and a most valued 
counsellor. Personally, I knew little of it. 

I may perhaps be pardoned for alluding to the 
second letter I received from him, simply to show 
the bias of his thought. He had written to inquire 
what prospect there was of my recovery from a 
wound, received in the first battle of Bull Run, 
which it was supposed would permanently cripple 
me, and asked what I intended to do. In answer I 
suggested that there did not seem to be anything I 
could do, unless it was to keep a toll-gate on a 
plank road. Replying he said : " When a man has 
done his best, it is enough ; and even one who 
tends a toll-gate need not feel that he is not a 
worthy part of the world's life, if he makes correct 
change and does not delay the travelers." 

His interest in the events which succeeded the 
war was keen and earnest without being dogmatic. 
He had no theory, and never seemed so hopeful as 
most people in regard to the near future ; as to the 
ultimate outcome, so strong was his faith in Ameri- 
can civilization and the destiny of the republic, 

z 



290 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

that it may be questioned if he ever doubted. He 
admitted that the study of history gave no parallel 
of the situation, and few even remote analogies. 
He thought the problem too intricate, and its ele- 
ments too indistinctly defined, to permit any one to 
predict the forms it would assume, or even the 
means of the solution. 

Speaking of the race problem, and the fact that 
it was more difficult and dangerous than slavery, he 
once said : 

" It is the peculiarity of social progress that the 
effect of remedying one evil is always to unmask a 
more difficult one. In the earlier stages of civiliza- 
tion the effort of society is to restrain the indi- 
vidual ; in its later stages to restrain groups or 
classes. And the fewer the classes become, the 
more difficult is the task, not only because the body 
to be moved is larger, but because no class ever 
concerns itself about another's wrongs until its 
own rights are in danger. Slavery would not have 
been abolished in a century if the slaves had not 
been counted in representation ; and the negro citi- 
zen will never enjoy equal rights until a' majority 
of the whites feel themselves pinched in privilege 
by the form that restricts his legal power." 

He was especially anxious and careful as to the 
progress the colored race is making, or likely to 
make, not so much in education and accumulation, 
as in manhood. 

" I do not understand them," he wrote in one of 






AS A PUBLIC MAN 29I 

his last letters. "I cannot get hold of them. 
Their future seems as dark as their past, and both 
are inscrutable to me. They are stronger and 
weaker, better and yet more hopeless, than I hoped 
they would be, after so many years. It is not 
enough for a people to be wronged, they must be 
feared before another will do them justice. The 
colored people will have to stop asking for favor 
before they will get justice." 

In these remarks I have only sought to give an 
idea of the character of Dr. Anderson in his rela- 
tion to public events, as it impressed me, not to 
analyze his work or measure his influence. He 
was an active citizen ; as an official, his conduct was 
worthy of the high ideals he professed. Largely 
by his exertion the international legislation by 
which the gorge of Niagara is " preserved for the 
delight and instruction of the ages," was enacted, 
and he fulfilled the pledge with which he accepted 
a place on the commission to the letter, " to give 
assurance to the people of New York that there is 
one public enterprise within her borders which has 
not the shadow of a 'job ' in it." 

If the views I have expressed of his character as 
a public man are correct, the value of his services 
to the American people cannot be well estimated. 
He was not a statesman, in that he neither formu- 
lated nor carried into effect measures of great pub- 
lic import. He was not a publicist whose work 
was important for originality or extent. He was 



292 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

not a partisan who welded individuals into masses 
animated by a common purpose for the achieve- 
ment of great results. He was not a diplomatist 
in whose hands lay the destinies of nations, though 
had opportunity offered he would undoubtedly have 
excelled as such. He was not an agitator, nor a 
civil administrator to whom great reforms were 
due. For all these relations he showed an aptitude 
and capacity which attest the fact that he would 
have done himself and the country credit in any of 
them ; but it is as a stimulator of the sense of pub- 
lic duty in the individual that he stands pre-emi- 
nent. No monument and no memorial can do jus- 
tice to the untiring assiduity with which he instilled 
this impulse in those who fell under his influence. 
Every address, every lecture in chapel, every con- 
versation, was redolent with the ideas that the 
highest function of man is to promote a better 
manhood, improve the conditions of his fellows. 
The value of such teaching can be estimated only 
by its effect on those whose ideal he helped to 
shape. Of him it can be said that the qualities 
which founded the university under conditions of 
the utmost difficulty, under other conditions might 
have founded a State ; but whether State or univer- 
sity claimed his powers, the end of his endeavor 
would not have been his own glory or advantage, 

but the common good. 

Albion W. Tourgee. 
Ma.yvix.lb, N. Y. 



VII 



A CHARACTERIZATION 



MY honored father died when I was two years old ; 
and I never saw my beloved mother after I 
was parted from her at the age of six. Neverthe- 
less I have been peculiarly fortunate in my educa- 
tors ; having been blessed with such noble teachers 
as Francis Wayland and Martin Brewer Anderson. 
Not that the latter was in the technical sense my 
teacher. But in the moral sense he certainly was. 
For when I entered my Rochester pastorate, inex- 
perienced in public duties and delicate in health, he 
put his strong arms around me, and not only kept 
me from sinking, but daily lifted me up into a 
higher plane of thought and aim and life. I sup- 
pose there was scarcely a Sunday evening, after 
■ worship, when he did not invite me to walk with 
him, talking soothingly about my little sermons, 
delicately pointing out their faults, ingeniously sug- 
gesting improvements in method, heartily recogniz- 
ing what he generously insisted were "good points." 
I do not believe the instructor ever lived who knew 
how to make more of a man, mentally and morally, 
than Teacher Anderson. 

For me to attempt to portray such a character 

293 



294 MARTIN B. ANDERSON 

would have been presumption had I not been re- 
quested to undertake it. Let my portrayal be the 
rough sketch of an Impressionist, rather than the 
elaborate representation of a Pre-raphaelite. 

Richest memories cluster around the name of 
Martin Brewer Anderson. Memories of a stalwart 
personality : he was massive in frame ; commanding 
in mien ; impetuous in movement ; athletic in pur- 
pose; bold in encounter; strenuous in grappling; 
heroic in achievement. Memories of an intellectual 
personality : he was solid in mentality ; versatile 
in gifts ; studious in habits ; broad in range ; keen 
in discernment ; deductive in method ; inductive in 
result ; swift in processes ; cautious in conclusions ; 
practical in application. Memories of an aesthetic 
personality : he was rich in culture ; varied in ac- 
complishments ; just in criticism; sensitive in ap- 
preciation ; generous in encouragement ; affluent in 
expression. Memories of a patriotic personality : 
he was intense in loyalty ; versed in history ; con- 
servative in tendency ; wise in opportunism ; far- 
sighted in statesmanship ; national in pride ; inter- 
national in sympathy. Memories of a moral 
personality : he was acute in conscientiousness ; 
sterling in principles ; intense in convictions ; ex- 
alted in aim ; pure in life ; philanthropic in tem- 
perament ; helpful in instinct ; stout in upbuilding. 
Memories of a prophetic personality : he was vigi- 
lant in scanning; intuitive in interpreting; instinc- 
tive in forecasting ; far-sighted in horoscoping. 



A CHARACTERIZATION 295 

Memories of an educational personality : he was 
strong in foundations ; apt in adjustments ; youth- 
ful in spirit; considerate in judgment; vigorous in 
administration ; watchful in observation ; manly in 
treatment; fatherly in counsel; enthusiastic in 
helping ; robust in buttressing. Memories of an 
affectionate personality : he was domestic in habits ; 
appreciative in humor; loyal in friendships; chival- 
ric in defense. Memories of a Christian personal- 
ity : he was rich in experiences ; devout in life ; 
docile in exegesis ; practical in theology ; loyal in 
church life ; zealous in good works ; virile in char- 
acter. 

In brief, Martin Brewer Anderson was a Chris- 
tian nobleman, towering among his fellow-men as 
the evergreen pine of his own native State towers 
among the forest trees. Gone, he is still here, 
speaking to his foster-sons throughout the world the 
motto of that same natal Commonwealth- — 

DlRIGO. 

George Dana Boardman. 

Philadelphia. 



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